Gundelia tournefortii

Gundelia is a low to high (20–100 cm) thistle-like perennial herbaceous plant with latex, spiny compound inflorescences, reminiscent of teasles and eryngos, that contain cream, yellow, greenish, pink, purple or redish-purple disk florets. It is assigned to the daisy family. Flowers can be found from February to May. The stems of this plant dry-out when the seeds are ripe and break free from the underground root, and are then blown away like a tumbleweed, thus spreading the seeds effectively over large areas with little standing vegetation. This plant is native to the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle-East. Opinions differ about the number of species in Gundelia. Sometimes the genus is regarded monotypic, Gundelia tournefortii being a species with a large variability, but other authors distinguish up to nine species, differing in floret color and pubescence. Young stems are cooked and eaten in the Middle-East and are said to taste like a combination of artichoke and asparagus. The plant also contains compounds that have been demonstrated to be effective against a range of ailments. A large quantity of pollen assigned to Gundelia has been found on the Shroud of Turin, which may suggest that the crown of thorns was made from Gundelia, but this finding has been contested. It's called Akkoub (Arabic: عكوب‎) in Arabic, silifa in Greek, Akuvit ha-Galgal (Hebrew: עַכּוּבִית הַגַּלְגַּל‎) in Hebrew, Kangar (Armenian: կանկառ) in Armenian and Persian, Kenger in Turkish, and Kereng in Kurdish. Any reference to Kenger in the Turkish language originates from the Kurdish language as, in Turkey, Kenger is native to and grown only in the Kurdish inhabited region. It's called tumble thistle in English. Gundelia tournefortii is a spiny hemicryptophyte with stems 20–100 cm high, that branch from the base, the first growth of the plant consists of a rosette of leaves. All parts contain a milky latex. The parts above the surface break from the root and may be blown away by the wind as a tumbleweed, assisting in the dispersion of the seed. All counts executed sofar arrive at eighteen chromosomes (2n=18). The plant develops a woody, vertical rootstock of up to 4 cm in diameter, at the surface usually covered by the remains of old leaves. The leaves are sessile or decurrent at their base with spiny wings, and alternate set along the stems. The lowest leaves are usually 7–30 cm long and 4–16 cm wide, pinnately dissected and the sections of the larger leaves may be pinnately parted themselves, and have a dentate or serrate margin, all tipped with spines. The midvein and sideveins are prominent, whitish, sometimes tinged purple. The leaf surface may be covered in spiderweb-like hairs, that tend to wither away quickly. The stem divides into ten or more branches, each of which is topped by a compound spiny ovoid inflorescence of 4–8 cm in diameter, which may be covered in dense arachnoid hairs. This inflorescence is unusual for members of the Asteraceae family, as each true flowerhead is so far reduced as to only contain one floret, which is surrounded by its own involucre. Five to seven of these monofloral flowerheads combine into secondary flowerheads, each subtended by a spiny bract hardly or substantially longer than the secondary flowerheads, with only the centre floret developing a cypsela, and the surrounding ones only producing pollen. These secondary flowerheads later break free from the globose assembly of flowerheads that sit on the end of each branch of the stem during the tumbleweed-stage. Remarkable for a member of the Cichorieae tribe are also the disk florets, a trait that is further only present in Warionia saharae. The pentameric corollas are usually 7–10  mm long, gloomy purple or yellowish outside, white to bright yellow, greenish, flesh colored or silvery to red purple inside, with spreading narrow lobes of 3–4 mm mm  long  and about 1 mm wide, the tube hairless inside. The five merged anthers form a cylinder of 4–6  mm long, yellow or brownish in color. The style arms are also brownish.