Carthamus mitissimus

Carthamus mitissimus is a low-growing perennial herb of the daisy family Asteraceae and one of the so-called distaff thistles in the genus Carthamus. Unusually for the genus, it is essentially spineless or only weakly armed, with a low rosette of pinnatifid to deeply lobed basal leaves and short, often few-branched flowering stems generally 10 to 30 cm tall. The leaves are dark green, somewhat coriaceous and bear soft bristles rather than the rigid spines of its weedy congeners. Solitary or few terminal flower heads are enclosed by leaf-like, lobed outer involucral bracts surrounding the inner spine-tipped phyllaries, and bear numerous slender, deep blue to violet-purple tubular florets that distinguish it from most other species in the genus. Fruits are smooth, four-angled achenes tipped by a pappus of scales. The species is native to the western Mediterranean basin, occurring in the Iberian Peninsula, southern France and north-western Africa, where it grows on dry rocky slopes, calcareous grasslands and open pastures.