This showy plant grows abundantly all summer on dry banks and pastures.
You will easily recognise it by the large heads of pale yellow flowers
with their woolly sepals.
The flowers are grouped in two heads at the end of a stout stalk, and
there are usually ten to twenty separate flowers in each head. The
petals seem very similar to those of the Trefoils, but each petal ends
in a long claw, and these claws are hidden in the cup formed by the
sepals.
This calyx-cup is edged round the mouth with sharp teeth, and it is
covered with grey fluffy down. The grey down gives a woolly appearance
to the flowers.
You also find a frill of narrow green pointed leaves without stalks
underneath each head of flowers.
When the petals and stamens have fallen off, the yellow calyx-cup
becomes much swollen, and inside it there remains a small pod which
bears the seeds.
On the upper side the leaves are a delicate blue-green, with fine silky
hairs all over them. But underneath these leaves are much paler. Each
leaflet is long and narrow and is placed the one opposite the other on
the leaf-stalk, at the end of which there is always a solitary leaflet.