Woolly rock rose
Halimium lasianthum
Family · Cistaceae · Harmless
The silvery shrub with large yellow flowers and a brown blotch at the base of each petal, covering schist and granite scrub of central and northern Portugal.
Scrubland · Uplands · Pine woods
Also known aswoolly halimium
How to tell it
A shrub half a metre to a metre and a half, with opposite oval leaves covered in dense white down giving a silvery tone. Bright yellow flowers three to four centimetres, with five crumpled paper petals, nearly always with a dark brown or purple blotch at the base. Endemic to the western Peninsula.
What it is confused with
Yellow halimium
Halimium halimifolium
They are very close and both have yellow flowers with a dark blotch. This is northern and central, on schist and granite, with broader woollier leaves; the other is coastal and southern, on sand. Neither is dangerous.
Open sheet →What it is for
No use. It is a pyrophyte like the other rock roses: it comes back fast from the seed bank after a fire, and a slope dominated by halimium is a slope that burned in the last few years.