Flora-Fauna

Lomelosia argentea (L.) Greuter & Burdet

≡ Scabiosa argentea L.
≡ Scabiosa ucranica L.
(First published as Scabiosa argentea in Sp. Pl. 100; 1753. Treated in Nouvelle Flore du Liban et de la Syrie, vol. 3, p. 345; 1983, under Scabiosa argentea)

• Life-form & habit: Biennial or perennial, stems erect, rigid, slender, often much-branched, 50–80 cm tall.
• Leaves: Pubescent, sometimes silvery-white, or green and nearly glabrous; variable in form: basal leaves usually pinnatipartite with oblong or oblong-linear lobes, upper leaves narrowly linear, entire or lobed.
• Inflorescence & flowers: Capitula flat, rather small, c. 1 cm diam.; bracts linear-lanceolate, as long as or shorter than the head. Corollas pale (white, whitish-yellow or tinged pink), marginal florets slightly radiating. Fruiting capitula spherical, often overtopped by accrescent bracts.
• Fruit: Involucel with white silky tube, surmounted by a coronule shorter than the tube, with 20–24 nerves, denticulate; calyx limb shortly stipitate; awns 3–4 times longer than the coronule.
• Phenology: Flowers July–September.
• Habitat & elevation: Mountain slopes and dry rocky terrains.
• Lebanese distribution: Mount Kneissé, Mount Sannine, Hasroun, Yammouneh, Dimane.
• Syrian distribution: Jabal Slenfé, Jabal Mattai.
• Native range (Euro+Med): Albania; Algeria; Armenia; Azerbaijan; Belarus; Bulgaria; Crete (with Karpathos); Crimea; Croatia; Former Yugoslavia; France (including Channel Islands and Monaco); Georgia; Greece; Israel/Palestine; Israel/Palestine–Jordan; Italy (including San Marino and Vatican City); Jordan; Lebanon; Syria; Moldova; Montenegro; Romania; Russia (C European Russia, North Caucasus, S European Russia); Serbia (including Kosovo); Sicily (with Malta); Türkiye (Asiatic part, Türkiye-in-Europe); Ukraine (including Crimea).

⚠️ Taxonomic note: Mouterde (1983) treated this taxon under Scabiosa argentea with synonymy to S. ucranica. Following Greuter & Burdet, Euro+Med and POWO place it in the genus Lomelosia.