FILAGO GERMANICA

Family:- COMPOSITAE

Common Names:- Common cudweed

Synonyms Antennaria germanica, Filago vulgaris, Gnaphalium germanicum.

Meaning:- Filago (L) Thread.

Germanica (L) German, from Germany.

General description:- Short, greyish-white woolly annual.

Stem:-

1) 5-35(40) cm, erect, more or less regularly branched above the middle.

Leaves:-

1) 12-20(-30) x 1-3 (-4) mm, linear-lanceolate to lanceolate, more or less undulate.

Flowers:-

1) Capitula, 5 x 1·6 mm, more or less terete, in dense, globose clusters of (15-)

20-35(-40); clusters 10-12 mm wide, not overtopped by subtending leaves.

2) Involucral bracts, 4-4·5 x 1·1 mm, lanceolate, straight in fruit, yellowish, usually

red-tinged, with a long yellow arista.

3) Inner female florets, 20-25; hermaphrodite (1-)2-3(-4).

Fruit:-

1) Achene, 0·5-0·8 x 0·2 mm, oblong to ovoid, brown.

2) Pappus, well developed, of whitish hairs.

Key features:-

1) Inner florets female and hermaphrodite, very rarely all hermaphrodite, all fertile

and with well-developed pappus.

2) Leaves linear- to oblong-lanceolate, widest at the base the lower half.

3) Outer and middle involucral bracts 4-4·5 mm, long-aristate, the inner nearly

always reddish-tinged on the margin.

4) Capitula in globose clusters of (15-)20-35(-40).

Click here for a glossary of terms used.

Habitat:- Open dry shrubby vegetation, dry grassland, woodland clearings, gravelly

streambeds. 0-1100 m.

Distribution:- Throughout Greece, except in the SE Aegean area.- W, C & S

Europe eastwards through Anatolia to caucasia and N. Iran. Fairly rare on Crete,

mainly in the west. with one location in the far east.

Flowering time:- Late Apr to mid-July.

Photos by:- Steve Lenton