Dusty-miller

Jacobaea maritima is a low, mound-forming evergreen subshrub of the Asteraceae family, typically 30 to 70 centimetres tall, with woody-based stems clothed in a dense, persistent silvery-white tomentum that gives the entire plant its characteristic ashen appearance. The alternate leaves are thick and felted, 5 to 15 centimetres long, pinnately to bipinnately lobed with oblong, blunt segments, the upper surface becoming greener with age while the underside remains densely white-woolly. In summer the plant produces flat-topped, terminal corymbs of small daisy-like flower heads, each 7 to 12 millimetres across, with a central disc of yellow tubular florets surrounded by ten to thirteen short, bright yellow ray florets, subtended by a cylindrical involucre of tomentose phyllaries. The fruit is a small cylindrical brown achene 2 to 3 millimetres long bearing a soft white pappus. Native to rocky coastal cliffs and limestone slopes of the central and western Mediterranean, it is widely cultivated as a foliage bedding plant in temperate gardens for its striking silver leaves.