SPECIES DESCRIPTION
HYMENONEMA GRAECUM
Family:- COMPOSITAE
Common Names:- None
Synonyms:- Catananche graeca.
Meaning:- Hymenonema (Gr) Meaning unknown
Graecum (L) From Greece, Greek.
General description:- Perennial herb.
Stem:-
1) 20-70 cm, simple or sparingly branched, with pale,minute glandular and longer
eglandular hairs.
Leaves:-
1) With dense, appressed, rigid hairs.
2) Basal, 70-250 mm, pinnatifid, with dentate segments, the terminal segment not
more than 10 mm wide, scarcely larger than the lateral.
3) Upper cauline, 1-6, like basal or bract-like.
Flowers:-
1) Capitula 1-3.
2) Involucre 15-24 x 15-22 mm.
3) Bracts ovate or oblong-ovate, obtuse, entire or dentate, glabrous.
4) Phyllaries in several imbricate rows, ovate, subobtuse, pale greenish in the
middle, often with a dull purplish outer zone and scarious margins.
5) Ligules linear-oblong, deep yellow.
6) Anther tube orange-brown.
7) Receptacular pits glabrous or with a few short cilia.
Fruit:-
1) Achenes with a more or less uniform pappus of lanceolate scales, the midrib
prolonged as a rigid, subplumose hair.
Key features:-
1) Terminal lobe of leaf not more than 10 mm wide.
2) Pappus more or less uniform, of lanceolate scales, with a rigid, subplumose hair
at apex.
Habitat:- Dry pastures, roadsides, rocky slopes with dry open shrubby vegetation,
on various substrates. 0-200 (-700) m.
Distribution:- Endemic to the Aegean. Rare on Crete currently know from only one
location in the west.
Flowering time:- Mid-Apr to June
Photos by:- George Alevisopoulos
