Daisy fleabane

Erigeron philadelphicus is a soft-pubescent biennial or short-lived perennial herb of the Asteraceae family standing 20-90 cm tall from a short fibrous-rooted crown that often produces winter rosettes. The stem is slender, leafy, simple below and branched in the inflorescence, clothed throughout in fine spreading hairs. Basal leaves are obovate to spatulate, 4-15 cm long, coarsely toothed to shallowly lobed, narrowed to a winged petiole; cauline leaves are alternate, oblong to lanceolate, sessile and prominently clasping the stem with rounded auricles, becoming smaller upward. The inflorescence is a loose terminal corymb of several to many flower heads, each 1.5-2.5 cm across and held on slender hairy peduncles. Each head has an involucre of narrowly lanceolate green bracts about 4-6 mm long in nearly one row and is conspicuous for its very numerous (100-400) extremely slender thread-like ray florets 4-8 mm long, ranging from pale lavender-pink to nearly white, surrounding a small yellow disc of tubular florets. The fruit is a small flattened pubescent cypsela about 1 mm long with a double pappus of fine white bristles. Native across most of temperate North America from Alaska and Newfoundland south to Mexico, in moist meadows, woodland edges, roadsides and fields.