Alyssoides


Alyssoides is a genus of flowering plants in the family Brassicaceae containing a single species, Alyssoides utriculata. A herbaceous perennial plant native to Southern Europe and Turkey, it grows on dry rocky slopes and on calcareous rocks, reaching heights of 20 to 50cm and blooming with yellow flowers between April and May–July.
The genus formerly contained a second species, Alyssoides cretica, but after molecular phylogenetic studies from 2008 and 2013 it was reassigned to the genus Lutzia.
There are two subspecies: the A. utricalata subsp. utriculata, and A. utriculata subsp. bulgarica, which characteristically differ by the pattern and shape of their hairs.
Alyssoides utriculata is used as an ornamental plant and in gardening may be referred to as inflated bladderseed or as bladderpod.

Distribution

The plant's distribution ranges from southern France to Turkey. It is found in the Massif Central of France, the Western Alps, the Apennines of Italy, the Dinaric Alps of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Albania; in western Kosovo, in Serbia, in the south of North Macedonia, in Greece m; relatively common in the north-east, in more isolated locations in the north and the central areas ), in Bulgaria, southwestern Romania, and northern Anatolia.