漏盧屬

Echinops grijsii Credit: HAST

Large stout perennial herbs with white tomentum. Leaves alternate, pinnatifid or pinnatilobed, margins spiny. Heads 1-flowered, sessile, densely congested in compound involucrate globose balls. Involucral bracts of many imbricate series, rigid, pungent, sometimes spinescent, the outer shorter, needle-like, the inner spatulate, awned, the innermost linear or lanceolate, short-awned. Receptacles minute; florets all fertile. Corolla tubular, white or blue, tube slender, limb deeply 5-lobed. Stamens with glabrous filaments. Style with thick branches and a thick basal ring, spreading. Achenes elongate, densely villous. Pappus a crown of many short scale-like or connate bristles.

About 120 species distributed Eurasia, north and east Africa; one in Taiwan.

Lower Taxon

• Echinops grijsii Hance