Field pussytoes

Antennaria neglecta, the field pussytoes or prairie everlasting, is a low, mat-forming herbaceous perennial in the Asteraceae spreading by slender, leafy stolons to form patches of small basal rosettes. Basal leaves are oblanceolate to spathulate, 2–5 cm long, with a single conspicuous central vein, an entire margin, and a soft, persistent white-woolly indumentum on both surfaces, the upper surface becoming greener with age. Flowering stems are erect, slender, leafy with reduced linear bracts, and 10–35 cm tall, also white-tomentose. The species is dioecious: male and female flower heads are borne on separate plants in tight, terminal corymbose clusters of 3–10 heads. Each head is 6–10 mm long with overlapping, dry, papery phyllaries that are dull white or tinged pinkish-brown in female plants and broader and shorter in male plants; the florets are pale and inconspicuous. Fruits are small, glabrous achenes crowned with a pappus of fine bristles. It grows in dry, open meadows, prairies, and old fields across much of central and eastern North America, flowering in spring.