Blanket bush

Bedfordia arborescens, the blanket bush or tree blanketleaf, is a tall evergreen shrub or small tree in the Asteraceae family native to the cool wet forests of south-eastern Australia, including Victoria, New South Wales, and Tasmania. The plant typically grows three to eight metres tall, occasionally to ten metres, with a slender, often single-stemmed habit and finely fissured greyish bark. The alternate leaves are narrowly oblong to lanceolate, ten to twenty centimetres long, dark glossy green above and densely covered beneath with a thick layer of soft white or pale yellow felt-like hairs that give the species its common name. Flower heads are borne in autumn and winter in branched terminal panicles; each head is small and discoid with five to seven golden-yellow tubular florets and bears no ray florets. The achenes are slender and crowned by a pappus of fine bristles aiding wind dispersal.