Adenostyles leucophylla

Adenostyles leucophylla is a compact alpine herbaceous perennial of the family Asteraceae endemic to the high mountains of central and southern Europe, particularly the Alps where it grows on calcareous and silicate screes between roughly 2000 and 3000 metres. From a short woody rhizome it produces erect simple stems 10 to 40 centimetres tall, conspicuously clothed in dense white woolly tomentum on every aerial surface — a feature that distinguishes the species from its larger lowland relatives A. alliariae and A. alpina and gives rise to the epithet 'leucophylla' (white-leaved). Leaves are alternate, the lower long-petiolate and the upper sessile, all triangular to broadly ovate and palmately lobed or coarsely toothed, 3 to 10 centimetres across, deep green and thinly hairy above but densely silvery-white tomentose beneath. The inflorescence is a dense terminal corymb of small cylindrical flower heads, each 1 to 1.5 centimetres long and containing four to six tubular, pinkish-purple disc florets surrounded by woolly phyllaries; ligulate ray florets are absent. The fruit is a small ribbed cypsela bearing a pappus of fine bristles. The species is a characteristic colonist of moving alpine scree and stabilised stone slopes.