Cicerbita alpina

Cicerbita alpina, the alpine sow-thistle or alpine blue-sow-thistle (sometimes treated as Lactuca alpina), is a robust perennial herb in the family Asteraceae native to the mountains of Europe, including the Alps, Pyrenees, Carpathians, Sudeten Mountains, Balkan ranges, and Scottish Highlands, growing in tall-herb communities of damp shaded subalpine ravines, mountain streamsides, and open beech-pine woodland on base-rich soils at 800-2200 m. The plant arises from a stout creeping rhizome and produces erect leafy unbranched stems 60-180 cm tall, glabrous below and clothed in coarse reddish-brown glandular hairs in the inflorescence. The leaves are alternate, large (10-30 cm long), and pinnately divided, with a very large triangular-hastate terminal lobe and several pairs of smaller backward-pointing lateral lobes; the upper leaves clasp the stem with auriculate bases and become progressively reduced and entire. The inflorescence is a tall narrow terminal raceme-like panicle of relatively few medium-sized flower heads, each 1.5-2 cm across, with bright blue to violet-blue ligulate ray florets only (no disc florets), and a cylindrical involucre with two ranks of bracts covered in dark glandular hairs. The achenes are ribbed and bear a dirty-white pappus of fine bristles.