Woolly hawkweed

Hieracium villosum, the shaggy or woolly hawkweed, is a tufted perennial herb in the family Asteraceae, native to the mountains of central and southern Europe, where it grows on stony alpine and subalpine pastures, limestone screes and rock crevices. From a short woody rootstock it produces a basal rosette of soft, oblong-lanceolate, entire to slightly toothed leaves 3-12 cm long, distinctively clothed in long, soft, white spreading hairs that give the whole plant a silky, shaggy appearance. One or a few flowering stems rise 15-40 cm tall, similarly woolly, each terminating in one to three large, golden-yellow capitula 3-5 cm across composed entirely of ligulate ray florets, surrounded by densely white-villous involucral bracts. The achenes are small, dark and topped with a pappus of brittle whitish bristles. The species is sometimes grown in alpine and rock gardens.