Ortegia hispanica

It is a ± glaucous plant, with a woody stalk. Stems up to 30(60) cm high, junciform, erect -rarely spreading-, strongly branched from the base, with rigid, angular branches, often strongly scabridged at the top. Leaves from 5-15(20) x 1-2 mm, shorter than internodes, sessile, entire, achillate, glabrous, often scabrous at margin; scarious stipules, almost setose, swollen basally in a persistent gland, purplish. Flower bracts scarious, linear-lanceolate, with scabrious margin and keel and 2 small purple glands at base. Sepals are 2-2.5(3) mm, ovate-lanceolate, ± acute, keeled and scarious on the keel, greenish, broadly margined scarious, usually sublacinate. Seeds are small, fusiform, honeyed.

It is found on uncultivated land, slopes or woody rainfed crops, on sandy, acid, that is, siliceous soils; at an altitude of 300-1500 metres in the central west of the Iberian Peninsula, lacking in coastal areas, and reaches the interior of Galicia and in the south to points of the Sierra Morena; reported as adventitious in Algeria (Mascara) and Italy (Piedmont), it seems to have disappeared from these countries, as it has not been collected for a century and a half; there is a modern collection from the Landes de Gascogne, where it may be a recent introduction.

The genus name of Ortegia is in honour of José Ortega (d. 1761; not to be confused with Casimiro Gómez Ortega (1741-1818), a botanist, apothecary and doctor), a Spanish military apothecary at the court of Ferdinand VI. He was also the secretary of the royal academy of medicine and director of a medicinal botanical garden in Madrid. Hispanica is a geographical epithet referring to its location in Hispania.