Pseudognaphalium affine

Pseudognaphalium affine, formerly Gnaphalium affine, is an annual or biennial herb of the Asteraceae family widely distributed across East and Southeast Asia, including China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Indochina and the Indian subcontinent. It typically grows 10 to 50 cm tall, with erect or ascending stems clothed in dense, persistent white-woolly tomentum, giving the entire plant a soft silvery appearance. The alternate, sessile leaves are spathulate to oblanceolate, 2 to 7 cm long, decurrent at the base, with entire margins and a tomentose surface on both sides. Numerous small yellow capitula, 2 to 3 mm across, are aggregated into dense, flat-topped or rounded terminal corymbs; involucral bracts are pale yellow, dry and papery. Florets are tubular and yellow, the marginal ones filiform, the central ones bisexual. Achenes are oblong and topped with a pappus of slender bristles. The species favours fields, paddy margins, roadsides and disturbed habitats.