3.
Centaurea montana
Linnaeus, Sp. Pl. 2: 911. 1753.
Mountain cornflower or bluet, centaurée des montagnes
Perennials,
25—80 cm, from rhizomes or stolons.
Stems
1—several, erect, simple or sparingly branched, villous with septate hairs and thinly arachnoid-tomentose with long, simple hairs.
Leaves
thinly villous and ± tomentose, glabrate; proximal leaves winged-petiolate, blades 10—30 cm, margins entire or remotely dentate to pinnately lobed; mid and distal leaves sessile, blades decurrent, ovate to oblong or lanceolate, entire or remotely denticulate.
Heads
radiant, borne singly or in few-headed corymbiform arrays; (peduncles to 7 cm).
Involucres
ovoid to ± campanulate, 20—25 mm.
Principal phyllaries:
bodies greenish, ovate to lanceolate, scarious-margined, appendages appressed, brown to black, unarmed, decurrent on phyllary margins, pectinate-fringed, puberulent; innermost phyllaries sometimes unappendaged.
Florets
35—60+; sterile florets 10—20, corollas blue (white, purple, or pink), 2.5—4.5 cm, corolla tube elongate.
Disc florets
25—40+; corollas purple, ca. 20 mm; anthers dark blue-purple.
Cypselae
± brown, 5—6 mm, sericeous;
pappi
of bristles 0.5—1.5 mm.
2
n
= 24 (Germany), 40 (Russia), 44 (France).
Flowering summer (Jun—Aug). Escaped from cultivation, roadsides, woodlands, sagebrush scrub; 0—1400 m; introduced; St. Pierre and Miquelon; B.C., N.B., Nfld. and Labr. (Nfld.), Ont., Que.; Alaska, Idaho, Maine, Mich., Minn., Mont., N.H., N.Y., Oreg., Pa., Utah, Wash., Wis.; Europe.
Centaurea montana
is a very handsome plant, native to the mountains of Europe, now widely cultivated as an ornamental.
