This is a most unusual little wildflower but one that is not difficult to identify when after you have realised that it is dioecious – with male and female flowers on separate plants. The little female plants bear absolutely tiny pinkish flowers in heads (12 mm across) on short, erect stems. The little male flowers are usually white, in soft, downy heads (6 mm across) with both plants carrying five to eight little heads in each cluster. The erect stems of this perennial rise from rosettes of dark green lanceolate leaves which are woolly below, with a few stem leaves above. Like other members of the Asteraceae family, its seeds are distributed from a pappus. Mountain Everlasting only grows to about 20 cm tall and is generally confined to limestone grassland, cliffs, rocky places and sand-dunes. It blooms from May to July and is a native plant.
My first record of this attractive little plant was in 1979 on Moneen in the Burren. I photographed it by Lough Gealáin in the Burren in 2010.
If you are satisfied you have correctly identified this plant, please submit your sighting to the National Biodiversity Data Centre
