Tuberaria guttata

Annual of the Cistaceae family, widely spread around the Mediterranean basin, from the Canary Islands and the Iberian Peninsula to the eastern Mediterranean, with a few isolated Atlantic stations up to the British Isles. It colonizes open dry grasslands, scrublands, rocky slabs, and poor siliceous sands, always in full light and on well-drained to skeletal soils.

The plant is slender and elongated, reaching 10 to 30 cm, with thin often reddish stems, bearing slightly hairy oval basal leaves and narrower, opposite cauline leaves.

The flowers, borne in loose cymes, have five bright yellow petals, often adorned at their base with a well-marked dark purple-brown spot that gives each flower a characteristic dark eye — it is precisely this detail that the epithet guttata, "spotted," recalls. These ephemeral flowers last only a morning, in the manner of rockroses.

In its natural habitat, its flowering extends from April to June depending on latitude and altitude.

In cultivation, it is sown directly in place in the spring in poor, sandy, and perfectly drained soil, in full sun. It does not tolerate shade or heavy, damp soils. Its short lifespan is compensated by easy spontaneous reseeding in suitable conditions.