Thistle spindle

Appearance

This plant stems up to 45 cm in height, erect, eventually somewhat branched at the top, longitudinally and inconspicuously ribbed, foliose, glabrescent or with dense clothing of sandy hairs. The leaves, up to 7 by 2 cm, are more or less leathery, with a glabrescent upper surface and a densely sandy underside, seated or, sometimes, the basal ones are short petiolate, linear or oblong-lanceolate, pinnathifid or pectinate-pinnatipartite, with 3- 10 pairs of spiny lobes with glabrescent upper surface and underside densely sandy; the lower ones in a basal rosette and the apical ones forming a pseudo involucrewith 35-65 mm involucre leaves, similar to the previous ones, although often narrower, arched-patent and applied at their base on the involucre. The chapters are terminal, solitary and sitting, with an involvement of 2-2.5 by 1-4 cm, ovoid or ovoid-campanulate, with bracts in 7-15 series, longer from the outside to the inside; the external and middle ovate or obovate, obtuse, truncated or slightly emarginate at the apex, somewhat leathery and with scarious margins, sometimes somewhat purplish-tinted at their apex, with an apical spine of up to 7.5 mm; the internal ones, linear or linear-lanceolate, with scarious margin and apical spine of up to 6 mm. The receptacle is covered with paleaslacerated somewhat ciliated on the margins. It supports heteromorphic flowers, all hermaphrodite and functional: ligules in the periphery and florets in the rest. The ligulate flowers are glabrous, with a whitish tube and the limb, extended / patent, violaceous, and apically pentalobed with unequal lobes and sinuses, while the corolla of the florets is of a single color and with a pentalobed limbus. The cyselae present a certain heteromorphy between the florets and the ligules, the latter having a somewhat less robust body. They are all densely sericeous, snowy white, with a persistent inconspicuous nectary in the center of the apical plate. The vilanoIt is about 10-15 mm in both types, with a single row of 8-20 hairs on the ligules and 15-20 on the florets, in both cases feathery, brown at their bases and snowy white in the rest, as well as somewhat dilated at the apex where the cilia are shorter than at the base. Said hairs are free from each other and welded in a basal ring, more or less high; the whole is decayed in block.

Naming

Cardo heredero in Spanish.

Distribution

Attraylis humilis is an endemic species of the eastern half of the Iberian Peninsula (including Ibiza, Balearic Islands ) and southeastern France, although there are also a few specific citations in Morocco and Algeria at high altitudes (1600-2000 m).

Habitat

It grows in clearings in forests and bushes, roadsides, ditches, stony and arid places, preferably in basic soils, from sea level to 1300 m altitude (in Spain). Flowers and fructifies from June to October.