TUSSILAGO FARFARA

Family:- COMPOSITAE

Common Names:- Coltsfoot

Synonyms:- Cineraria farfara

Meaning:- Tussilago (L) Tussis as in Pertussis (whooping-cough), with a feminine

suffix. The leaves were a medicinal treatment for coughs.

Farfara (L) With a mealy surface.

General description:- Rhizomatous perennial herbs.

Rhizome:-

1) Long, deep-seated, far-creeping, whitish, scaly, bearing rosettes of leaves.

Leaves:-

1) All basal, 10-20(-30) cm, suborbicular, shallowly sinuately lobed and irregularly

denticulate, cordate at the base, green but thinly floccose above when young,

persistently whitish-lanate beneath.

2) Petiole, sulcate on adaxial surface.

Scapes:-

1) 4-15 cm, elongating in fruit, axillary, with numerous purplish scales,

floccose, appearing before the leaves, erect in bud, nodding after anthesis.

Flowers:-

1) Capitulum 20-30 mm diam. bright yellow ligules numerous.

2) Involucre c. 10 mm.

3) Bracts numerous, linear-lanceolate, obtuse, purplish and with a scarious margin.

4) Phyllaries all in one row, 8-10 mm lance-shaped, subobtuse.

5) Receptacle slightly convex, without scales.

6) Ligulate florets, in many rows, female, yellow; tubular florets few, functionally

male.

Fruit:-

1) Achenes c. 3 mm narrowly cylindrical, with 5 ribs, truncate at the apex.

2) Pappus-hairs numerous, in 1 row, denticulate.

Key features:-

1) Capitula with numerous florets, more than one ligulate.

2) Scapes with numerous purplish scales.

3) Ligules in several rows.

Click here for a glossary of terms used.

Habitat:- Streamsides, damp clayey road embankments, field margins. 0-1400 m.

Distribution:- Throughout mainland Greece, Peloponnisos and the Ionian islands. A

widespread Euro-Siberian species. Rare on Crete, currently known from only a few

location in the north-west.

Flowering time:- (Feb)Mar to early May.

Photos by:- Mihaela Bizioura