Ericameria nauseosa

Ericameria nauseosa is an aromatic many-branched shrub of the Asteraceae family typically 30-230 cm tall, forming dense rounded clumps with flexible whitish to greenish twigs covered in a felt of fine matted hairs and exuding a faint rubbery odour when bruised (the latex of the stems was historically investigated as a rubber source). The bark of older stems is grey and fibrous. Leaves are alternate, sessile, linear to narrowly linear, 1-7 cm long and 0.5-2 mm wide, entire-margined, often somewhat twisted, smooth or covered in dense whitish tomentum, glabrescent in some subspecies and bluish-green to grey-green. The inflorescence is a rounded to flat-topped terminal cyme of numerous small flower heads. Each head is narrowly cylindrical, 7-12 mm long, with an involucre of five vertical rows of 12-25 glabrous to pubescent inner bracts in distinct ranks and contains 5 (rarely 4-7) bright golden-yellow tubular disc florets; ray florets are absent. The fruit is a slender pubescent cypsela 4-7 mm long, topped by a dense white pappus of fine capillary bristles whose mass conspicuously catches autumn light, releasing wind-borne seeds. Widespread across western North America from British Columbia to northern Mexico, dominant on dry alkaline plains, sagebrush steppe and disturbed roadsides.