Spotted rockrose
Tuberaria guttata
Family · Cistaceae · Harmless
The small yellow flower with a reddish brown blotch at each petal's base, filling sandy clearings in spring, whose petals drop at the first touch. Each flower lasts a morning.
Scrubland · Pine woods · Dunes and sand · Fields and pasture
Also known asannual rockrose
How to tell it
Five paper-thin yellow petals, almost always with a dark basal blotch, over a rosette of hairy leaves. A small annual that vanishes entirely in summer. The petals fall away if touched.
What it is confused with
Sage-leaved rockrose
Cistus salviifolius
Same family, both with fragile petals. Sage-leaved rockrose is a woody shrub with white flowers; spotted rockrose is a small annual herb with a blotched yellow flower.
Open sheet →What it is for
No direct use. The common name comes from an old belief: it was said that where it grew there were desert truffles below, and there is in fact a real association with those underground fungi on sandy soils.