Common everlasting

Chrysocephalum apiculatum is a small herbaceous perennial of the daisy family forming low, spreading mats or loose tufts 10-40 cm tall from a creeping woody rootstock. Stems are erect to ascending, slender, and densely covered with a soft greyish-white woolly tomentum. Leaves are alternate, narrowly oblong to linear-elliptic, 1-5 cm long, sessile, with revolute margins and a small apiculate tip; both surfaces are clothed in fine appressed hairs giving a silvery-grey appearance. Inflorescences are dense terminal corymbs of 5-20 small, globose to hemispherical capitula each 6-10 mm across, composed entirely of bright golden-yellow to orange tubular disc florets enclosed by imbricate, papery, brightly coloured involucral bracts that persist long after flowering. Fruits are tiny achenes bearing a pappus of fine barbellate bristles. Widespread across most of mainland Australia in open woodlands and grasslands, it flowers most of the year given adequate moisture.