Trailplant

Adenocaulon bicolor, the American trailplant or pathfinder, is a perennial herb of the Asteraceae family native to moist coniferous forests of western North America, from southern Alaska and British Columbia south to California, and disjunct in the northern Rocky Mountains and Great Lakes region. It typically grows 30 to 100 cm tall from a slender rhizome, with a slender, weak stem bearing a basal rosette of long-petioled, triangular to deltoid-cordate leaves 5 to 15 cm wide, green and glabrous above and conspicuously white-woolly beneath, the contrast between surfaces giving the specific epithet. Disturbed leaves flip to show the silvery undersides, marking the path of passers-by. The slender, open, branched panicle bears tiny inconspicuous discoid heads of 3 to 8 whitish florets. Achenes are club-shaped and densely covered with stalked glandular hairs that adhere to fur and clothing as a dispersal mechanism.