Description
Flower heads bowl-shaped, solitary at the ends of the branches, 1-2 cm (0.39 – 0.78 inch) tall. Phyllaries ovoid to lanceolate, with fine vertical lines, the edges papery and fringed, lacking spines. The flowers are an intense blue color, produced in flowerheads (capitula), 1.5 – 3 cm (0.59 – 1.18 inch) diameter, with a ring of a few large, spreading ray florets surrounding a central cluster of disc florets. Centaurea cyanus is native to temperate Europe, but is widely naturalized outside its native range. It has been present in the British Isles as an archaeophyte (ancient introduction) since the Iron Age.[4] In the United Kingdom it has declined from 264 sites to just 3 sites in the last 50 years.[5] In reaction to this, the conservation charity Plantlife named it as one of 101 species it would actively work to bring ‘back from the brink’.[6] In Co. Clare (VC H9), Ireland, Centaurea cyanus is recorded in arable fields as very rare and almost extinct,[7] while in the north-east of Ireland it was abundant before the 1930
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