COMPOSITAE COMPOSITE FAMILY 
COMMON EVERLASTING 
Gnaphalium polycephalum Michx. 
This very fragrant herb can easily be determined by odor 
alone after one is familiar with it. The plant is common in rather 
dry fields and waste places from Nova Scotia to Manitoba and 
south to Florida and Texas. It 
is an annual, or more commonly 
winter annual, and blooms in 
August and September. 
The whole plant is more or 
less covered with white woolly 
hairs. It produces an upright 
stem 1-3 feet high, branching 
near the top. At the base is a 
rosette of oblong leaves that 
taper into short petioles. The 
leaves of the stem are sessile, 
densely white woolly beneath 
but nearly smooth and dark 
green above. 
The numerous heads are pro- 
duced in clusters of 5 or less. The 
bracts of the involucre are white 
or sometimes tinged with brown. 
They are oblong and thin and 
the outer are woolly at the base. 
The receptacle is nearly flat and Wii 
not chaffy. There are no ray \ 
flowers but several outer rows of it 
disk flowers are pistillate only ' 
and have very narrow corollas | 
minutely 3 or 4-toothed. The few central flowers are perfect 
and their whitish or yellowish corollas are 5-lobed. The pappus 
is I series of threadlike bristles. The oblong akenes are smooth. 
The Purple Cudweed or Everlasting, Guaphalium purpureum L., 
is less common on sandy or gravelly soils but will be found blooming 
from May to September. The slender 2-20-inch stem is covered with 
silvery white hairs. The many leaves are small, spatulate, entire 
and green above but silvery beneath. The tubular whitish flowers are 
in small heads sessile in upper axils and also in a terminal, sometimes 
leafy spike. Bracts of the involucre are tawny to purplish and the 
outer are woolly at the base. 
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