Scorzoneroides carpetana

Scorzoneroides carpetana (Lange) Greuter (Asteraceae) is a perennial rosette-forming herb 10-40 cm tall, native to the Iberian Peninsula and adjacent parts of southern Europe, where it inhabits subalpine grasslands, rocky pastures and open siliceous ground at moderate to high elevations, particularly in the Sistema Central. Plants arise from a stout dark-brown vertical rootstock that produces all the leaves in a basal rosette. Leaves are oblanceolate, 4-15 cm long, glabrous to thinly hairy, with shallowly toothed to runcinate-pinnatifid margins, narrowed at the base into a winged petiole. From the rosette arise one to several leafless, unbranched scapes each bearing a single terminal nodding-in-bud head 2-3 cm wide. The involucre is cylindric-campanulate with imbricate phyllaries that are minutely puberulent. Ligulate florets are bright yellow, the outer often reddish-striped beneath. Achenes are slender, beaked, with a pappus of plumose tan bristles. It is a typical component of montane pastoral vegetation.