Jacobaea adonidifolia

Jacobaea adonidifolia is an erect glabrous perennial herb of the Asteraceae family standing 30-80 cm tall, arising from a short woody rootstock with fibrous roots. The stem is slender, ridged, leafy throughout and branched only in the inflorescence. The leaves are alternate, finely divided two- to three-pinnatisect into narrow linear segments 1-3 mm wide, giving the foliage a feathery aspect superficially resembling that of Adonis (whence the epithet); the lower leaves are stalked while the upper ones are sessile and become progressively smaller, all glabrous and dark green. The inflorescence is a flat-topped to broadly pyramidal corymb of numerous flower heads. Each head is 10-15 mm across, with an involucre of 8-13 narrowly lanceolate green inner bracts, often with a few small calyculate outer bracts. The 8-13 ray florets are golden-yellow, oblong-elliptic, 5-8 mm long, surrounding numerous tubular yellow disc florets. The fruit is a small cylindrical glabrous cypsela about 2-3 mm long, crowned by a soft white pappus of fine bristles 4-6 mm long. Native to mountain pastures and rocky grasslands of the Pyrenees, Massif Central, Cantabrian range and other south-western European uplands.