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Eryngium castrense
Also called Great Valley Coyote Thistle
Great Valley eryngo is a spiny, heavily branched perennial herb native to California's Central Valley, growing in seasonally wet vernal pools and pond edges. It needs wet winters and dry summers, and is rarely grown outside native plant gardens.
Eryngium castrense is a species of flowering plant in the family Apiaceae known by the common name Great Valley eryngo, or Great Valley button celery. This plant is endemic to California, where it grows in wet areas such as vernal pools and ponds in the central part of the state. This is a heavily branched, spiny perennial herb reaching maximum heights of around half a meter. It produces light green to grayish green hairless stems with occasional lobed, oval-shaped leaves. At the tops of the stems are flower heads 1–1.5 centimeters (0.4–0.6 in) wide and rounded or egg-shaped. At the base of each head is an array of 7 to 9 spiny, pointed bracts up to three centimeters long, and sometimes a few smaller bractlets above. The rounded flower head contains many small white to light purple flowers.
Alpine Sea Holly · Amethyst eryngo · Rattlesnakemaster · Eryngium arenosum · California eryngo · Coastal eryngo · Beethistle · Eryngium babadaghense · Baldwin's eryngo · Eryngium billardieri · Eryngium bithynicum · Amethyst Eryngo
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Eryngium castrense by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
