Centaurea pectinata

Centaurea pectinata, commonly known as comb-bracted knapweed, is a perennial herb in the family Asteraceae native to the western Mediterranean, particularly the Iberian Peninsula and southern France, where it grows on dry stony grasslands, garrigue, open pine woodland, and rocky calcareous slopes from the lowlands into the lower montane zone. The plant arises from a stout woody rootstock and forms a basal rosette together with several erect or ascending, branched, ribbed, slightly hairy stems 20 to 60 centimetres tall. Lower leaves are pinnatifid to deeply pinnatisect with narrow lanceolate lobes, 5 to 15 centimetres long, often slightly arachnoid-hairy; upper leaves are smaller, sessile, and entire to coarsely toothed. The flower heads are solitary or in small terminal corymbs, 2 to 4 centimetres across, with all florets tubular and pink to purple — the marginal florets enlarged, spreading, and sterile. The phyllaries are characteristically tipped with a brown to blackish pectinate (comb-like) fringe of stiff bristly teeth, which gives the species its epithet. The fruit is a small achene with a short pappus of stiff bristles.