Achillea micrantha

Tilcayo Cats original · Plants · Sources and editorial assessment · Originals retention rule

Achillea micrantha is a yellow-flowered perennial in the daisy family, Asteraceae. Kew accepts it as a species with a native range extending from eastern Europe to southwestern Siberia and the Caucasus.

Appearance and regional records

The Latvian flora describes plants about fifteen to fifty centimetres tall, covered in grey hairs. The stiff, upright stems branch near the top. The leaves are finely divided into narrow segments, and the small flower heads form dense, broadly flat-topped clusters. Both the outer ray flowers and the central disc flowers are yellow.

That flora records flowering from July to September. In Latvia it describes the species as a very rare introduction, found around Daugavpils in sandy places and dry disturbed ground. This national interpretation is more specific than Kew's broader distribution unit, which includes the Baltic States within the native range.

A name applied to different plants

The name has a complicated history. In a 1999 study, Karin M. Valant-Vetschera examined how Willdenow first used Achillea micrantha for a Siberian plant in 1789, then changed the concept in 1803 to refer to material from Cappadocia. At the same time, he named the Siberian plant Achillea gerberi.

Valant-Vetschera selected an earlier published illustration as the nomenclatural type, fixing A. micrantha to the Siberian plant and treating A. gerberi as its synonym. Her study distinguished the Cappadocian plant as Achillea arabica, also known under the later name A. biebersteinii. Thus an older mention of A. micrantha needs to be checked against the author's usage before its description or locality is assigned to this species.