Euchiton involucratus

Euchiton involucratus, the star cudweed or common cottonleaf (formerly placed in Gnaphalium), is an erect annual to short-lived perennial herb in the Asteraceae family native to Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, and parts of southeast Asia, growing in open grasslands, pastures, woodland clearings, and disturbed ground. Plants reach 15 to 60 centimetres tall on solitary or sparsely branched stems clothed in cobwebby white-woolly indumentum. The leaves are alternate, narrowly oblanceolate to linear, 3 to 10 centimetres long, dark green and nearly glabrous above and densely white-felted beneath, the basal leaves usually withered at flowering. The inflorescence is a terminal cluster of small discoid capitula subtended by a conspicuous involucre of leafy bracts that exceed the heads and give the species its specific epithet meaning involucrate. Each capitulum contains numerous tiny yellowish florets enclosed by dry papery phyllaries. Fruits are small ribbed cypselas bearing a deciduous pappus of barbellate bristles.