Common woolly sunflower

Eriophyllum lanatum, commonly known as common woolly sunflower or Oregon sunshine, is a tufted perennial herb in the family Asteraceae native to western North America from southern British Columbia south through Washington, Oregon and California to northern Baja California, and east to Montana, Wyoming and Utah, where it occurs in open meadows, rocky slopes, coastal bluffs, sagebrush flats and roadsides from sea level to montane elevations. Plants grow 10 to 60 centimetres tall from a stout woody caudex, with much-branched ascending stems that are densely clothed, like the leaves, in tangled white-woolly tomentum giving the whole plant a silvery-grey appearance. The leaves are alternate or partly opposite, 1 to 8 centimetres long and variably shaped, ranging from entire and linear to deeply pinnately three- to five-lobed with linear lobes. The bright lemon-yellow flower heads are solitary on long naked peduncles at the branch tips, 1.5 to 5 centimetres across, with eight to thirteen broad rays surrounding a dense central disk of perfect tubular florets; the involucral bracts are equal, oblong and densely woolly. The fruit is a small dark, four-angled achene crowned by a short pappus of scales.