Erodium paularense

Perennial herb, 10-30 cm; rosulate chamaephyte; caudex woody, thick, branching; crown clothed in withered leaf remains; below this the caudex purple; stem ends in a rosette of leaves from which axillary umbels.

Leaves: Leaves silver-green, odorous; lamina triangular-ovate 1.5-9 x 1-2 cm wide at base, bipinnatisect with intercalary leaflets, with patent eglandular hairs, and some scattered glands; principal segments 7-11, in the plane of the blade; tertiary lobes 0.4-0.7 mm wide, 2-3 times longer than wide, linear to linear lanceolate, acute; petiole 1.3-8 cm long; stipules 4-6, 3.7-4.8 mm long, narrow triangular, adnate to petiole for (0.25-)0.33(-0.5) of their length, ciliate and pubescent, a few glandular hairs beneath, brown.

Inflorescence: Umbel of (2-)4-8 flowers; bracts 5-8, 3.7-5.5 mm, free, scariose, ovate or lanceolate, brownish; sepals 4.9-7.1 mm in flower, 10mm in fruit, oblong elliptic, 3-7 nerved, margin scariose, obtuse or rather rotundate at apex, with mucro of 0.6-1.2 mm; flowers 2-3cm diam; petals obovate, 8.5-12.5 mm long, inequal, bicoloured; inferior pink to pale lilac’ with purple veins; superior 2 petals shorter and wider, darker and with a dark purple blotch, covering c. 1/3 of the surface; petal claw hairy; ; nectaries olive-green; staminodes glabrous, pink; stamen filaments dilated at base, with tufts of rigid hairs on the abaxial face; anthers pink, pollen rose-coral; stigmas purple. Flowers (February-)April-July.

Erodium paularense; photo credit: Dyoke van Assum; from the IGG Facebook Group, Licenced under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0)

Fruit: fruit 44-59 mm; mericarp 7-9.8 mm, brown, densely hispid; foveole round, with many pedicellate glands, with few or many ciliate hairs at edge. 2n=20

Distribution: Sierra de Guadarrama, 50km NW of Madrid; peaks along the border of Madrid province and Segovia province, on limestone remnant strata; isolated from the known distribution of E. glandulosum.