Scorzoneroides helvetica

Scorzoneroides helvetica, the Swiss hawkbit (formerly Leontodon helveticus), is a tufted perennial herb of the family Asteraceae growing 5-30 cm tall from a short thick rootstock, native to the alpine and subalpine zones of central and southern European mountain systems including the Alps, Pyrenees and the Carpathians. The plant forms a basal rosette of narrowly oblanceolate to spatulate leaves 3-12 cm long and 5-15 mm wide, tapering to a winged petiole and ranging from entire-margined to pinnately lobed or deeply toothed with backward-pointing lobes; the leaves are usually clothed with simple unbranched hairs, distinguishing this species from related forked-haired hawkbits. From the centre of the rosette arise one or several leafless flowering scapes, each terminated by a single nodding flower head 2-3 cm across. The involucre is bell-shaped, blackish-green, with overlapping bracts bearing long dark hairs. The capitulum is composed entirely of bright yellow strap-shaped ligulate florets, the outer ones often striped reddish or greyish on the underside. The fruit is a slender cylindrical longitudinally ribbed cypsela 4-7 mm long bearing a single row of feathery plumose pappus bristles. It grows in acidic alpine grasslands, snowbeds and stony pastures on siliceous soils.