Omalotheca norvegica

Omalotheca norvegica is a slender perennial herb of the Asteraceae family standing 8-30 cm tall, arising from a short ascending rhizome with fibrous roots. The stem is erect, simple or sparingly branched, unbranched below the inflorescence and densely clothed in fine appressed greyish woolly hairs (tomentum). Leaves are alternate, narrowly lanceolate to oblanceolate, 3-7 cm long and 4-10 mm wide, with an acute tip, an entire margin and a clasping or narrowly tapering base; the upper surface is loosely woolly and greyish-green, the lower surface densely white-tomentose; basal leaves form a loose rosette but are usually withered at anthesis. The inflorescence is a narrow elongated leafy spike-like raceme 4-15 cm long occupying the upper third of the stem, with sessile flower heads clustered in the axils of progressively reduced bracteal leaves. Each head is 5-7 mm long, with an involucre of imbricate brownish papery bracts; florets are all tubular, with a few central hermaphrodite disc florets and numerous slender outer female florets, all yellowish-brown. The fruit is a small cylindrical glabrous cypsela 1-1.5 mm long with a single row of fine white pappus bristles. Native to arctic and montane Europe on damp open grasslands, snow-beds and alpine meadows.