Botany picture #50: Eryngium campestre

Eryngium campestre (Apiaceae), Germany, 2007. The Apiaceae are best known for the carrot and all the spices they provide - fennel, parsley, caraway, anise, etc. - and most of them look kind of the same: deeply divided leaves and small usually white or sometimes yellow flowers arranged in a double umbel. But there are a few more unusual groups that a beginner in botany would not even recognize as part of the family. The genus Eryngium is one of those - many of them look more like thistles, and the South American representatives look much like monocots. Unfortunately I do not have good pictures of the latter, so here is a European representative.