Daisy-leaved toadflax
Anarrhinum bellidifolium
Family · Plantaginaceae · Harmless
The plant that changes leaf halfway up: a rosette of broad leaves at the bottom, like a daisy's, and leaves split into fine strips on the stem, as if it were two different plants.
Scrubland · Uplands · Walls and rocks · Roadsides and waste ground
Also known asfalse snapdragon
How to tell it
A basal rosette of broad, spoon-shaped, toothed leaves persisting while the plant flowers. The stem, upright and slender to a metre, carries completely different leaves: split into three to seven narrow strips. A long narrow spike of minute pale blue or white flowers with a short spur.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
No use
It is worth it as one of the best examples of heterophylly in the Portuguese flora: the same plant makes two completely different kinds of leaf, and anyone seeing only the rosette would never guess the stem.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
No approved contributions for this entry yet.
Nothing appears here without a person reading it first. Contributions do not replace the entry or its warnings: until a botanist confirms, what is written above stands.