Pygmy cudweed

Filago pygmaea (syn. Evax pygmaea), the pygmy cudweed, is a small, prostrate, densely white-woolly annual in the Asteraceae rarely exceeding 5 cm across. The plant develops a flattened rosette of obovate to spathulate leaves 5–15 mm long, sessile, with entire margins and a rounded to obtuse apex; both surfaces are covered with dense, appressed cottony hairs that give the plant a silvery-grey appearance. Stems are very short or essentially absent, the inflorescence sitting flush within the leaf rosette. Numerous tiny flower heads are clustered into a central glomerule surrounded and partly concealed by inner leaves acting as bracts; each head is 2–4 mm wide and contains both narrow female florets in the outer ranks and a few hermaphroditic disc florets at the centre, all yellowish and inconspicuous. Phyllaries are membranous and woolly at the base. Fruits are minute, glabrous achenes lacking a pappus. It grows on dry, sandy or stony open ground in the Mediterranean basin, flowering in spring.