Herbariuma Backpackers project
All plants

Narrow-leaved cudweed

Logfia gallica

Family · Asteraceae · Harmless

Narrow-leaved cudweed (Logfia gallica)Narrow-leaved cudweed (Logfia gallica)
Pato Novoa from Valparaíso, Chile, CC BY-SA 2.0 · Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz, CC BY-SA 4.0

The grey woolly little plant that goes entirely unnoticed in dry fields, with needle-fine leaves and heads hidden in the forks of the branches.

Where it grows

Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Dunes and sand · Pine woods

Also known as

French cudweed

In flower

How to tell it

A plant ten to thirty centimetres, covered in white wool, forked in its branching. Very narrow long, almost needle-like leaves standing well above the heads. The heads are minute and clustered in small balls at the forks, hidden among the leaves, and you have to look to find them.

What it is confused with

No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.

What it is for

No use. It is here because it is among the most frequent and least noticed plants in dry Portuguese fields, and because knowing that a grey woolly thing has a name changes how you look at fallow ground.

Sources