Thorny burnet

Sarcopoterium spinosum, the thorny burnet, is a low, densely branched, deciduous, cushion-forming dwarf shrub in the Rosaceae characteristic of degraded Mediterranean garrigue, batha, and coastal phrygana from Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, and the Levant to North Africa. Plants grow 20 to 60 cm tall and equally wide, with stiff, intricately branched, woody stems whose ultimate twigs become rigid, sharp, leafless spines. The pinnate leaves are 2 to 6 cm long with 9 to 15 small, oval, deeply toothed leaflets, soft and grey-green, shed during the hot summer drought. Small, monoecious or sometimes hermaphroditic flowers are aggregated in dense, globose, terminal heads 8 to 15 mm across in spring; upper flowers are female with conspicuous red, brush-like stigmas, while lower flowers bear yellow-anthered stamens. The fruit is a fleshy, reddish, urn-shaped hypanthium 5 to 8 mm long enclosing one to two achenes. The species is a dominant indicator of overgrazed Mediterranean landscapes.