Shrubby plantain
Plantago sempervirens
Family · Plantaginaceae · Harmless
The plantain that makes no rosette and looks like no plantain at all: a woody branched subshrub with needle-fine leaves and small oval heads atop long stalks.
Roadsides and waste ground · Fields and pasture · Scrubland · Uplands
Also known asevergreen plantain
How to tell it
A woody, much branched base forming a dense tuft thirty to sixty centimetres. Extremely narrow leaves, opposite and bunched at the nodes. Short oval heads, greenish brown, with white stamens peeping out. It grows on road verges and dry limestone ground.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
No use. It is worth it for breaking the rule: a plantain is not necessarily a rosette of leaves on the ground, and recognising the family by its spike of minute flowers with protruding stamens works better than the plant's habit.