COMPOSITAE 



COMPOSITE FAMILY 



COMMON EVERLASTING 



Gnaphaliiim 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 

 not chaffy. There are no ray 

 flowers but several outer rows of 

 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, Gnaphaliiim 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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