Helichrysum leucopsideum

Helichrysum leucopsideum, commonly called satin everlasting, is a perennial herb or subshrub in the Asteraceae family endemic to southeastern Australia, occurring in New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia, where it grows in open eucalypt forests, heathy woodland, grasslands and rocky slopes on sandy or stony soils. The plant produces several erect, slender, white-woolly stems 20 to 60 centimetres tall arising from a short woody base. The alternate leaves are sessile and linear to narrowly oblong, 2 to 6 centimetres long, with revolute margins; the upper surface is green and almost glabrous while the lower surface is densely white-tomentose, giving the foliage a silvery-grey appearance. Flower heads are solitary or borne in small terminal corymbs, each capitulum 2 to 3 centimetres across with conspicuous, papery, pearly-white involucral bracts surrounding a central disc of yellow tubular florets; the bracts retain their colour and texture in dried specimens, hence the everlasting name. The fruit is a small, ribbed, glabrous achene crowned by a pappus of barbellate bristles.