Seaside daisy

Erigeron glaucus, commonly known as seaside fleabane, beach aster or seaside daisy, is a tufted perennial herb in the family Asteraceae native to the coastal bluffs, sand dunes and rocky headlands of the Pacific Coast of North America from southern Oregon south through California to northern Baja California. Plants grow 5 to 30 centimetres tall, forming low cushions or mats arising from a stout woody rhizome; the foliage and stems are characteristically glaucous, glandular and slightly succulent, giving the plant its specific epithet and its distinctive blue-green colouring. Basal leaves are obovate to spatulate, 3 to 10 centimetres long including the broad petiole, often shallowly toothed near the rounded apex, while stem leaves are smaller, sessile and entire. The flowering stems are stout and unbranched or sparingly branched, bearing one to several large flower heads 3 to 6 centimetres across. Each head has 45 to 150 narrow rays in shades of lavender, pink or pale violet surrounding a central yellow disk, subtended by an involucre of glandular hairy bracts in two to three subequal series. The fruits are slender ribbed achenes crowned by a double pappus of outer scales and inner bristles.