Broad-leaved cudweed

Filago germanica, the broad-leaved or common cudweed, is a small annual herb in the family Asteraceae native to Europe, western Asia, and North Africa, and naturalized elsewhere. It grows on dry, sandy, or disturbed ground, fields, and waste places. The whole plant is covered in dense white woolly hairs, giving it a soft grey felted appearance. The erect stem, 5–30 cm tall, branches in a characteristic forked (dichotomous) manner, with the flower clusters overtopped by the next branching. The narrow, oblong to lanceolate leaves are alternate, woolly, and crowded along the stem. The tiny flower heads are tubular, yellowish, and crowded into dense rounded woolly clusters in the forks and at the branch tips, each cluster containing many small heads surrounded by chaffy, pointed bracts. Flowering occurs in summer. The fruit is a minute achene. The plant is also widely treated under the name Filago vulgaris.