Shaggy mouse-ear-hawkweed

Pilosella peleteriana is a small rosette-forming perennial herb of the Asteraceae family standing 8-25 cm tall, producing short, leafy above-ground stolons (runners) clothed in long spreading whitish hairs that give the plant its 'shaggy' appearance. The basal leaves form a flat ground rosette and are oblanceolate to narrowly elliptic, 3-8 cm long and 1-2 cm wide, with entire margins, an obtuse tip and a tapering base; both surfaces are densely covered in long simple white hairs, the upper surface deep green and the lower paler with a more pronounced stellate-tomentose layer. The flowering scape is solitary, erect, leafless or with a single small bract, clothed in dense white setose hairs intermingled with dark glandular hairs. Each scape bears one (rarely two) terminal flower heads 2.5-3.5 cm across. The involucre is broadly cylindrical, 10-15 mm long, with several rows of dark green linear-lanceolate bracts densely covered in long blackish glandular and simple hairs. All florets are ligulate (strap-shaped), bright sulphur-yellow, often reddish-striped beneath. The fruit is a small dark cylindrical glabrous cypsela 1.5-2 mm long, with a single row of brownish-white pappus bristles. Native to dry calcareous grasslands and rocky banks across central and southern Europe.