Staehelina dubia

Staehelina dubia, the false cupidone or pink staehelina, is a small subshrub in the family Asteraceae native to the western Mediterranean basin, occurring on dry sunny rocky slopes, garrigue, and limestone scrub in Spain, southern France, Italy, the Balearic Islands, and adjacent North Africa. The plant grows 20-50 cm tall, with a woody base and many slender erect to ascending whitish-tomentose stems forming a small bushy clump. Leaves are alternate, linear-lanceolate, 1.5-4 cm long and 2-5 mm wide, with entire revolute margins, dark green and almost glabrous above and conspicuously white-felted beneath from a dense layer of stellate hairs, giving the foliage a strongly bicoloured appearance reminiscent of rosemary or lavender. The flower heads are small (1-1.5 cm long), narrow, urn-shaped, and borne singly or in small clusters at the branch tips, each containing 5-15 pink to pale purple tubular disc florets and no ray florets, surrounded by an involucre of overlapping pinkish to pale-brownish dry papery bracts that give the inflorescence a distinctive everlasting-like quality. Flowering occurs in mid- to late summer. The achenes are small, ribbed, and bear a long feathery (plumose) pappus that aids wind dispersal.