''Ferula drudeana'' is a species of flowering plant in the family

Apiaceae Apiaceae or Umbelliferae is a family of mostly aromatic flowering plants named after the type genus ''Apium'' and commonly known as the celery, carrot or parsley family, or simply as umbellifers. It is the 16th-largest family of flowering plants ...

, native to the

Adana Adana (; ; ) is a major city in southern Turkey. It is situated on the Seyhan River, inland from the Mediterranean Sea. The administrative seat of Adana Province, Adana province, it has a population of 2.26 million. Adana lies in the heart ...

area of Turkey. It has been proposed as a candidate for the fabled

silphium Silphium (also known as ''silphion'', ''laserwort'', or ''laser'') is an unidentified plant that was used in classical antiquity as a seasoning, perfume, aphrodisiac, and medicine. It also was used as a contraceptive by ancient Greeks and Romans ...

plant of antiquity. It is known from only three locations in Turkey, all sites of longstanding villages. DNA evidence shows that it is in a clade with

Central Asia Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...

n species of ''

Ferula ''Ferula'' (from Latin ''ferula'', 'rod') is a genus of about 220 species of flowering plants in the family Apiaceae, native to the Mediterranean region east to central Asia, mostly growing in arid climates. They are herbaceous perennial plants ...

''. It was first sampled by Walter E. Siehe (a German engineer and sampler) in July 1909, in the northern

Adana Province Adana Province ( tr, ) is a province of Turkey located in central Cilicia. With a population of 2.26 million, it is the sixth most populous province in Turkey. The administrative seat of the province is the city of Adana, home to 79% of the r ...

and identified as '' Ferula ovina''. Siehe sent samples to

Komarov Botanical Institute The Komarov Botanical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (russian: Ботанический институт им. В.Л.Комарова РАН) is a leading botanical institution in Russia, It is located on Aptekarsky Island in St. Pete ...

in St. Petersburg and to Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. In 1930, while studying the samples at the Leningrad herbarium, Evgenii Korovin identified the plant as a new species, calling it ''Ferula drudeana''. In 1983 Mahmut Miski started researching the plant in the wild of

Mount Hasan Mount Hasan ( tr, Hasan Dağı) is a volcano in Anatolia, Turkey. It has two summits, the high eastern Small Hasan Dagi and the high Big Hasan Dagi, and rises about above the surrounding terrain. It consists of various volcanic deposits, includ ...

, and in 2021 he published a paper in ''Plants,'' comparing ''Ferula drudeana'' to silphium and proposing it as potential silphium species. ''Ferula drudeana'' is a tall

perennial A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives more than two years. The term ('' per-'' + '' -ennial'', "through the years") is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. The term is also wide ...

herb, with thick, branching roots, compared to ginseng; a grooved stalk and stout striated stems; frond-like basal leaves and pinnate celery-like leaves with a stout basal sheath clasping the stem; yellow

flower A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants (plants of the division Angiospermae). The biological function of a flower is to facilitate reproduction, usually by providing a mechani ...

s produced in large

umbel In botany, an umbel is an inflorescence that consists of a number of short flower stalks (called pedicels) that spread from a common point, somewhat like umbrella ribs. The word was coined in botanical usage in the 1590s, from Latin ''umbella'' "p ...

s; and papery

mericarp A schizocarp is a dry fruit that, when mature, splits up into mericarps. There are different definitions: * Any dry fruit composed of multiple carpels that separate. : Under this definition the mericarps can contain one or more seeds (the m ...

s, shaped like inverted hearts. The plant takes at least ten years to mature and requires

cold stratification In horticulture, stratification is a process of treating seeds to simulate natural conditions that the seeds must experience before germination can occur. Many seed species have an embryonic dormancy phase, and generally will not sprout until this ...

germinate Germination is the process by which an organism grows from a seed or spore. The term is applied to the sprouting of a seedling from a seed of an angiosperm or gymnosperm, the growth of a sporeling from a spore, such as the spores of fungi, fer ...

, which makes it very hard to cultivate and propagate.

References

drudeana Endemic flora of Turkey Plants described in 1947 {{Apiaceae-stub