Carlina acaulis (Not!) Update

[Bern]

Here's my final photo of this plant. All of the disk florets are green and are standing up; the flower is no longer in the bud stage. There are no colorful ray florets like the ones on Carlina acaulis.  Whatever amounts to ray florets on this plant are also green. And, you can see the other flower that has gone to seed, now brown in color, in the background. 

I don't place any blame on the seed vendor.  Many times, seed sellers purchase seeds from suppliers and honest mistakes, or not, can be made.  I once purchased seeds for Alepidea capensis from Silverhill Seeds.  Think of this plant as vaguely resembling a venus fly trap. The seeds germinated and grew, and would have grown into some type of large shrub with thick branches. So, obviously it was not A. capensis.  I sent a photo of the seedlings to Silverhill who acknowledged the error and gave me store credit for other seeds.  So, things happen in this business......

This plant might even be in the genus Carlina, but not species acaulis for sure.  It will eventually be composted.



Thanks to everyone for your comments trying to help me with identification of this plant.  I appreciate it.

[Arnold]

Bern

Looks like Carlina corymbosa

[David Pilling]

Google lens identifies it as Carlina acaulis - Google lens is a lot better than it used to be. Walking about I have found recently, people pulling out their phones to id plants, rather than seeking my opinion. An example of machine replacing man.

[Martin Bohnet]

And what about its name?  Carlina acaulis, ssp. caulescens. Is this a misnomer or what?  How can a plant have a species name that means stemless and a subspecies name that means with stem?  I venture to say that the ssp. caulescens has a stem of very minor length that just barely distinguishes it from ssp. acaulis.  Certainly, ssp. caulescens does not have a "prominent above ground stem or trunk."  Whereas the plant in my possession clearly does, reaching 25 to 30 cms.

Don't even start about Allium paradoxum

ssp. normale 

Personally, I switched to DuckDuckGo to get rid of Googles KI Answers, as the browser plugin to filter them away for now only works with the English locale....