Eryngo

Eryngium creticum is an erect biennial or short-lived perennial herb of the carrot family (Apiaceae), typically 20–60 cm tall, with a stiff, much-branched, bluish or violet-tinged habit at maturity. The basal leaves are entire to lobed and long-stalked, while the upper stem leaves are sessile, palmately divided, and edged with spine-tipped teeth, giving the plant a thistle-like appearance though it is unrelated to true thistles. The small flowers are crowded into dense, ovoid to cylindrical bluish heads subtended by a whorl of narrow, spiny, often violet bracts. It flowers in summer, the whole plant becoming spiny and steely-blue. Native to the eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia—including Crete, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, the Levant, and Iran—it grows in dry, open, disturbed and rocky ground, fallow fields, roadsides, and garrigue, tolerating poor stony soils.