58 ASTERS, DAISIES AND EVERLASTINGS. 
One of the most common of our native weeds, and one of 
irritating acridity, exciting like Arnica-flowers sneezing, is chosen 
to contrast the reduction and minuteness of the floral organs in 
numerous of our composite plants, when compared to those of a 
conspicuously flowered Aster, such as alluded to in the last pages : 
The Sneexe-weed (Cotula or Centipeda Cunninghami).—A 
dwarf erect or adscendent odorous herb, glabrous or downy ; 
leaves scattered, less than an inch long, lanceolar- or oblong-wedge- 
shaped, somewhat crisp, sessile, along the margin toothed ; flower- 
heads axillary, solitary, sessile, depressed-globose or hemispheric ; 
bracts in two rows, very short, pellucid at the margin ; flowers 
in each head very numerous; only the central flowers bearing 
stamens ; corolla of all the outer flowers exceedingly minute, 
tubular ; corolla of the central flowers dilated, four-lobed and 
very short ; anthers four, nearly sessile, short-lobed at the base ; 
stigmas very short, blunt; fruits minute, clubshaped-cylindric, 
striped from below the turgid summit ; pappus none. 
The name Cotula, a diminutive, originated from some affinity 
of this genus to a spurious Chamomile, known in olden times as 
Cota. 
This herb grows particularly on river-banks, around swamps 
and on moist meadows, extending to Central and West Australia, 
but not to Tasmania. An allied species (Cotula minuta or 
Myriogyne minuta) differs in prostrate and less robust habit, 
leaves toothless towards the base, short-stalked flower-heads, 
bracts hardly pellucid along their margin, less copious florets, 
more ellipsoid fruits with streaks to near the summit. It occurs 
sometimes promiscuously with Cotula Cunninghami, but is 
preferentially a plant of forest-tracts, ascends higher mountain- 
regions, and while C. Cunninghami is an endemic Continental 
Australian always extra-tropic plant, C. minuta extends to South 
Asia, thence eastward to Japan, southward to New Zealand, and 
reappears in Valdivia and Mauritius and the South Sea Islands 
also. The odor of C. minuta is more pleasant than that of the 
other species ; both can be converted into snuff. 
Our everlastings are numerous, mostly pretty and often 
gregarious, particularly the desert-species. They belong chiefly 
