Ifloga spicata - Common Needlewort

Common Needlewort is an annual herb, 5-12 cm high, often branched from the base, stem and branches forming a dense globular to cylindric inflorescence from near the base or in the upper part. Leaves are woolly to silky-woolly, becoming hairless beneath, often with adhering sand-grains, 6-20 mm long, about 1.2 mm wide, with wider sheathlike base, the margins more or less involute. Flower-heads arise in groups, congested on small lateral branches, overtopped by the leaves. Disc florets are numerous, bisexual, narrowly tubular with indistinct teeth. Involucre is 3-4 mm long; phyllaries, hyaline, brownish to stramineous, apiculate, the inner with a thickened yellowish mid-rib, median and inner fertile and subtending a single female florets each. Cypselas brown, 0.5-0.6 mm long, obovoid; pappus (only in the bisexual florets) of easily falling bristles, plumose in the upper part, about 1.5 mm long. Common Needlewort is found in SE Spain, Macaronesia to India and Arabian Peninsula, including Western Himalaya and Western Ghats. Flowering: February-September.