Gamochaeta pensylvanica

Gamochaeta pensylvanica, the Pennsylvania everlasting or cudweed, is an annual or biennial herb in the daisy family Asteraceae. Despite its specific epithet it is native to the tropical and subtropical Americas and has become naturalised across many warm-temperate and subtropical regions worldwide as a weed of lawns, fields and roadsides. Plants reach 10 to 50 centimetres in height with erect to ascending, simple or sparingly branched stems clothed in soft white woolly tomentum. The leaves are alternate, oblanceolate to spatulate, with entire margins, dark green and thinly tomentose above and densely white-woolly beneath. Flower heads are small, narrowly cylindrical, sessile or short-stalked, gathered in dense leafy-bracted glomerules at the stem tips and in the upper leaf axils. The involucral bracts are dry and scarious with pale brownish or pinkish tips. Disc florets only are present; fruits are tiny cypselae bearing a pappus of bristles.