Broad-leaved cudweed
Filago pyramidata
Family · Asteraceae · Harmless
The grey plant covered in white wool that looks made of cotton and grows on poor, trodden soils. The heads are so small and so wrapped in hairs that you barely realise they are flowers.
Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Dunes and sand · Scrubland
Also known asspathulate cudweed
How to tell it
The whole plant is white with dense wool that comes off on the fingers. Tiny heads grouped into balls at the stem forks, wrapped in woolly bracts with yellowish tips. It branches in forks, giving the pyramidal look of its name.
What it is confused with
Common andryala
Andryala integrifolia
Both grey and woolly. Common andryala has open yellow heads with visible petals; cudweed has heads closed into balls of wool, with no petals in sight.
What it is for
The dry wool served as tinder for flint fire, like other woolly plants. No food use.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
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