Flora-Fauna

Echinops polyceras Boiss.

(Diagn. Pl. Orient. 10: 85, 1849; = Echinops blancheanus Boiss.; Nouvelle Flore du Liban et de la Syrie, vol. 3, p. 380; Pl. CCXVI nº 2; 1966)

• Life-form & habit: Tall perennial, often exceeding 1 m; stems stout, erect, very white-woolly, giving a canescent appearance.
• Leaves: Lanceolate to oblong-lanceolate, bipinnatisect into narrow lobules, each ending in a strong spine; surfaces grey-green, densely tomentose; basal leaves long-petiolate, cauline leaves sessile, decurrent.
• Inflorescence & flowers: Globose capitula 5–6 cm across, solitary or clustered; involucral bracts numerous, the basal forming a brush of denticulate bristles half the length of the rest, outer bracts spatulate-dentate, median lobed and serrate, inner shorter, obtuse, fimbriate, partly connate. Florets tubular, yellowish. Bracts of upper capitula sometimes prolonged into horn-like tips.
• Fruit: Achenes compressed, crowned by barbellate, paleaceous bristles united in a basal ring.
• Phenology: Flowers May–July.
• Habitat & elevation: Fields, steppes, and rocky slopes in arid to subarid habitats.
• Lebanese distribution: Beqaa (Baalbeck), Hermon (Rachaya).
• Syrian distribution: Damascus plain (Mezzé, Harasta, Marj el-Akhdar), Palmyra, Slenfé, Tell Hadid, Qaryatein, Jabal Abiad, Jabal Daoua, Ras el-‘Aïn.
• Native range: Iraq, Lebanon–Syria, Palestine, Saudi Arabia (POWO).