California rabbit-tobacco

Pseudognaphalium californicum, the California rabbit-tobacco or California cudweed, is an aromatic, sticky-glandular annual or biennial herb in the Asteraceae growing 30–80 cm tall. Stems are erect, simple or branched above, leafy throughout, and densely covered with both fine cottony hairs and longer glandular hairs that give the foliage a strong, sweet, balsam-like fragrance. Leaves are alternate, sessile and somewhat clasping, linear-lanceolate to oblanceolate, 3–8 cm long, with entire margins; the upper surface is bright green and viscid-glandular while the lower surface is paler and white-tomentose. The inflorescence is a flat-topped to rounded terminal corymb of numerous small flower heads; each head is 5–7 mm long with shiny, papery, pearly white phyllaries surrounding a small cluster of yellowish disc florets and several inconspicuous female filiform florets. Fruits are minute, smooth achenes crowned by a deciduous pappus of capillary bristles. It grows on open, often disturbed slopes in chaparral, oak woodland, and coastal scrub of California and Baja California, flowering through summer.