Immortelle

An erect annual herb of the daisy family, native to south-eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Anatolia and the eastern Mediterranean through to Iran, growing to about 30 to 60 cm tall. The slender, branching stems and the narrow, lance-shaped to linear leaves are clothed in fine whitish-grey woolly hairs, giving the plant a silvery appearance. It is best known for its papery, "everlasting" flower heads, borne singly at the branch tips: the true florets form a small central disc, surrounded by showy, stiff, dry, papery involucral bracts that are bright purple to pink (sometimes white) and retain their colour and form long after drying. The fruit is a small achene bearing a pappus. A plant of dry, sunny, open habitats such as stony slopes, fallow fields and roadsides, it is widely grown as an ornamental and for dried-flower arrangements owing to its persistent coloured bracts.