Yellow whitlow-grass

Draba aizoides is a small evergreen perennial herb of the cabbage family forming dense, low cushions 5-10 cm high. Numerous basal rosettes bear stiff, narrowly linear-lanceolate leaves 1-2 cm long, dark green, keeled, and conspicuously ciliate along the margins with stiff white bristles. From each rosette arises a leafless, glabrous flowering scape 5-12 cm tall topped with a short corymb of 4-18 bright yellow, four-petalled flowers about 8-10 mm across. Fruits are flattened, elliptic to ovate siliques 6-12 mm long, glabrous, on ascending pedicels. The plant is native to limestone cliffs, screes, and stony alpine pastures of the European mountain ranges from the Pyrenees through the Alps and Carpathians, with an isolated outlier in South Wales. It flowers from March through June.