Scorzonera karabelensis

Kara tekesakalı

Subscapigerous perennial, 3-6 cm high, covered with a ± densely sericeous, appressed, white-glossy, ± evanescent indumentum of 3-5 mm long hairs, the green colour, however, always showing through. Rootstock cylindrical, branched or simple and with one or a few crowded leaf rosettes, almost without remains of the bases of former leaves. Flowering shoots one to several per rosette, weak, densely sericeous, ascending, 2-7 cm long, usually unbranched and bearing a single capitulum, with a few leaves in their basal part. Leaves entire, soft, concave, with flat margins, densely sericeous on both sides, ± glabrescent with age, the parallel veins little conspicuous; rosette leaves 2-5 × 0.3-1.3 cm, oblanceolate , obtuse to acute and gradually narrowed towards the base; cauline leaves very similar to the rosette leaves but smaller and subacute. Flowering and fruiting capitula 13-16 mm long, cup-shaped, with 15-20 flowers leaning against and little exceeding the involucral bracts. Involucre not lengthening significantly during anthesis, sericeous outside, glabrous inside; number and shape of involucral bracts variable; outer involucral bracts 6-8, subulate to lanceolate, acute, 1/2 as long as the inner bracts; inner involucral bracts 8, linear-lanceolate, acute, subequal, 12-17 × 2-3 mm, often with up to 5 additional, ± linear innermost bracts, all adaxially green and with scarious margins. Flowers bright yellow, corolla 12-15 mm long, of that the tube c. 3 mm long , the limb c. 3.5 mm wide; anther tube c. 5 mm long. Achenes 5-6 mm long, slender, prismatic, smooth, densely covered with 3-6 mm long, snow-white, straight, soft, antrorse, appressed hairs. Pappus 8-9 mm long, its bristles straw-coloured, plumose with white fimbriae in the basal portion and barbellate above.

Endemic.