Medium to tall, hairy plant, often stoloniferous, with a basal leaf rosette. Stems usually with purple spots. Leaves pinnately lobed, the lower stalked the upper sometimes undivided. Flowers bluish lilac or mauve.

Indicator Species - Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland Local Nature Recovery Strategy.

Devil's bit Scabious and Small Scabious

Corolla is 4-lobed (Small Scabious is 5-lobed) and the outer flowers are much longer than inner.  Lower leaves simple/crenate; upper leaves pinnate, with intermediates between. 

A photograph of the flower and upper/lower leaves (RPR)

Meadows and roadside verges especially on calcareous soils, but often introduced into other other grassland habitats in wildflower seed-mixes.

July to September.

Perennial or biennial.

Fairly frequent throughout Britain.

Fairly frequent in Leicestershire and Rutland, but declining as a native plant due to habitat loss and degradation. 

In the Flora of Leicestershire (Primavesi and Evans 1988) it was found in 62 of the 617 tetrads, and in the Flora of Rutland (Messenger 1971) in 61 tetrads.

It is listed on the current VC55 Rare Plant Register (Hall and Woodward 2022) because of its threat-level