Zwerg-ruhrkraut

Gnaphalium supinum, the dwarf cudweed, is a small tufted perennial herb of the family Asteraceae forming low mats only 2-8 cm tall. The numerous short, ascending stems arise from a slender rootstock and bear narrow, spatulate to oblanceolate leaves clothed on both surfaces with a soft, woolly white indumentum that gives the plant a silvery-grey appearance. The minute brownish flower heads are clustered in a tight terminal corymb of just a few capitula, each surrounded by membranous brown-edged bracts and containing only disc florets. It is a circumboreal arctic-alpine species of stony summits, late snow patches, and mossy heaths in the mountains of Europe, northern Asia, North America, and Greenland.