Coronidium scorpioides

Coronidium scorpioides is a slender perennial herb of the Asteraceae family, growing 15 to 60 centimetres tall from a basal rosette or short woody base, with one to several erect, simple or sparingly branched, leafy flowering stems clothed in cottony hairs. The alternate leaves are linear to narrowly oblanceolate, 1 to 8 centimetres long and 2 to 10 millimetres wide, with a softly woolly underside and a greener, sparsely hairy upper surface, the margins entire and often slightly recurved. Each stem terminates in a single conspicuous flower head 1.5 to 4 centimetres across, surrounded by numerous papery, golden-yellow to bright-yellow involucral bracts arranged in many overlapping rows; the disc of small tubular yellow florets sits at the centre, and there are no ray florets. The dry bracts remain glossy and persistent, giving the genus the name "everlasting." Flowering occurs mainly in spring and early summer. Native to southeastern Australia, the species inhabits open eucalypt forest, woodland and heath on a range of soils.