Ortegia hispanica

It is a ± glaucous plant, with a woody stalk. Stems up to 30(60) cm high, junciform, erect -rarely spreading-, strongly branched from the base, with rigid, angular branches, often strongly scabridged at the top. Leaves from 5-15(20) x 1-2 mm, shorter than internodes, sessile, entire, achillate, glabrous, often scabrous at margin; scarious stipules, almost setose, swollen basally in a persistent gland, purplish. Flower bracts scarious, linear-lanceolate, with scabrious margin and keel and 2 small purple glands at base. Sepals are 2-2.5(3) mm, ovate-lanceolate, ± acute, keeled and scarious on the keel, greenish, broadly margined scarious, usually sublacinate. Seeds are small, fusiform, honeyed.[1][2]

It is found on uncultivated land, slopes or woody rainfed crops, on sandy, acid, that is, siliceous soils; at an altitude of 300-1500 metres in the central west of the Iberian Peninsula, lacking in coastal areas, and reaches the interior of Galicia and in the south to points of the Sierra Morena; reported as adventitious in Algeria (Mascara) and Italy (Piedmont), it seems to have disappeared from these countries, as it has not been collected for a century and a half; there is a modern collection from the Landes de Gascogne, where it may be a recent introduction.[3]

Ortegia hispanica was described by Loefl ex L. and published in Species Plantarum 560. 1753.[4]

In Spanish: arvejaquilla, escobilla, hierba de la sangre, hierba juncosa, juncaria.[3]