Eryngium alpinum

Eryngium alpinum, commonly known as the Queen of the Alps, is an endemic Alpine species found in Italy only at a very few sites in the Cottian and Maritime Alps (Piedmont) and the Carnic Alps (Friuli-Venezia Giulia). It has now become extremely rare due to indiscriminate collection and is threatened with extinction in many areas, as has already happened in Lombardy. For this reason, it is strictly protected, to the extent that it is listed as ‘Endangered’ on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

It grows in mountain pine groves and scrubland, in damp pastures, gorges and tall-grass communities (consortia of tall grasses), on calcareous or dolomitic substrates, from the upper mountain zone (around 1,300 m) to the alpine zone (around 2,500 m). It is easily recognised by its inflorescences, consisting of a single ovoid flower head that turns purplish-blue when mature, surrounded by numerous bracts arranged in a radial pattern and bearing many almost spiny, fringed laciniae, which are also purplish-blue in colour. 

Cultivated for its beauty in vegetable gardens and gardens, the genus name’s etymology is uncertain: it may derive from the Greek eryngion (hedgehog) or eryma (defence), in both cases alluding to the plant’s spiny nature.