Anaphalis margaritacea
 
Pearly Everlasting

Lower Leaf Top

Cypress Hills
29-July-2011

bullet

Anaphalis: Answers to key questions in Budd's Flora and Flora of Alberta leading to this genus. 
bullet

tall plants; NOT [low plants]

bullet

plants perennial with fibrous roots, often with rhizomes or stolons, but lacking a taproot; NOT [plants perennial with taproot, or low spreading annuals]

bullet

plants rhizomatous but lacking stolons; NOT [plants often stoloniferous]

bullet

juice watery; NOT [juice milky]

bullet

plants more or less white-woolly; NOT [plants not at all white-woolly]

bullet

basal leaves soon deciduous, not markedly larger than the numerous well-developed cauline leaves; NOT [basal leaves generally forming a persistent tuft or rosette, stem seldom very leafy]

bullet

basal leaves, if any, not cordate or sagittate; NOT [basal leaves cordate or sagittate]

bullet

stems leafy; NOT [leaves mostly basal, with stem leaves reduced]

bullet

receptacle naked; NOT [receptacle densely bristly]

bullet

flower heads with all florets tubular

bullet

dioecious or nearly so, the heads of at least some plants wholly staminate or pistillate; NOT [heads all with outer pistillate flowers and central perfect flowers], NOT [flowers all perfect] (FOA)

bullet

pistillate heads commonly with a few central staminate flowers; NOT [heads strictly dioecious] (FOA)

bullet

bracts of involucre dry, parchmenty or membranous, not green; NOT [bracts of involucre not dry or parchmenty, usually green] (BF)

bullet

involucral bracts mostly with dry, scarious, thin, white to yellowish or brownish tips; NOT [involucral bracts not markedly scarious at the tip] (FOA)

bullet

stamens united to form a tube around the pistil

bullet

pappus of capillary bristles, sometimes plumose; NOT [pappus of scales, or of awns, or a crown or none]