Seseli montanum

Seseli montanum, the mountain moon-carrot, is a perennial herb of the Apiaceae family native to dry calcareous slopes and rocky pastures of southern and central Europe, from the Iberian peninsula through the Alps and the Balkans. From a stout, woody, much-branched rootstock topped with the persistent fibres of old leaf-bases, it produces a low tuft of finely dissected, glaucous, bipinnate to tripinnate leaves divided into many narrow, thread-like ultimate segments. In late summer and autumn an erect, ribbed, glabrous stem rises to fifty centimetres, terminating in flat-topped compound umbels of small white to faintly pinkish, five-petalled flowers, the umbels subtended by narrow, often deflexed involucral bracts. The fruit is a small ribbed schizocarp with prominent ridges. The plant is strongly aromatic when bruised and favours sun-baked limestone soils.