Crepis albida

Crepis albida is a perennial herb in the daisy family (Asteraceae) native to the limestone mountains of southern Europe, occurring in the Pyrenees, the mountains of central and eastern Spain, southern France and parts of the western Alps and Apennines. It grows from a stout, branched, woody rootstock and produces a basal rosette of obovate to oblanceolate, sinuately toothed or pinnatifid leaves that are pale beneath with appressed whitish hairs, giving the species its epithet albida ('whitish'). The leafless to sparsely bracteate flowering scapes rise 10-30 cm and bear one to a few large solitary capitula 3-4 cm across. The heads are composed entirely of pale yellow, sometimes outer-reddened ligulate florets enclosed in an involucre of narrow, glandular-hairy bracts in two unequal rows. The fruit is a slender, ribbed cypsela tipped with a white, soft, capillary pappus that aids wind dispersal. The species inhabits stony slopes, screes and dry calcareous grasslands, generally above 1,000 m.