Ptychotis saxifraga

Ptychotis saxifraga, commonly known as stone parsley or cumin des moissons, is a slender biennial to short-lived perennial herb in the family Apiaceae native to the western Mediterranean basin and central and southern Europe, including France, Spain, Italy and parts of the Balkans, where it occurs on dry calcareous slopes, rocky garrigues, old walls, fallow fields and stony hillsides. Plants grow 20 to 80 centimetres tall from a slender taproot, with smooth, finely ridged, much-branched stems that have a wiry, somewhat zigzag habit and bear a sparse, airy foliage. The lower leaves are long-petioled and twice or thrice pinnately dissected into many fine narrow linear ultimate segments giving a feathery aspect, while the upper stem leaves are smaller, sessile and reduced to a few thread-like divisions. The inflorescence consists of numerous small compound umbels 1.5 to 4 centimetres across borne on long slender peduncles; each umbel has six to fifteen rays bearing umbellets of tiny white five-petalled flowers, often subtended by a few narrow involucral bracts. The fruits are small ovoid ribbed schizocarps about 2 millimetres long that release a faint aromatic odour when crushed.