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Annual to biennial, rarely short-lived perennial, from the Gentianaceae family, Centaurium erythraea is a species with a very wide Eurasian distribution, present in almost all of Europe, from the Mediterranean basin to Central Asia and North Africa. It colonizes varied environments: dry lawns, edges of light woods, poor meadows, roadsides, stabilized dunes, and sunny embankments, from sea level up to about 1,800 meters in altitude.
It forms a basal rosette of oval, opposite leaves, a bright green slightly glaucous, with well-marked veins. The flowering stems are erect, slender, dichotomously branched in their upper part, reaching 10 to 40 cm in height depending on growth conditions.
The flowers are grouped in dense, flat corymbs at the top of the stems; they are bright pink to bright carmine-pink, with five petals fused into a narrow tube opening star-like in light, and closing in overcast weather — a characteristic behavior of the species easily observable in the field.
One of the oldest medicinal plants in Europe, it was used since Antiquity as a bitter tonic and febrifuge; its name evokes the centaur Chiron, to whom ancient tradition attributed the discovery of its medicinal virtues. It is still used today in the composition of certain digestive preparations.
In its natural habitat, its flowering extends from June to September. In cultivation, it requires full sun and well-drained soil, poor to moderately fertile; it self-seeds spontaneously and integrates naturally into flowering meadows and characterful rock gardens.