Cudweed

Cudweed, the popular name of many small inconspicuous species of composite weeds of the genera Gnaphalium, Filago, and Antennaria, the stems and leaves of which are more or less covered with a whitish cottony down. The heads of the flowers consist, in great part, of dry involucreal scales, and may be kept for a long time without undergoing much apparent change, so that they may be reckoned among Everlasting Flowers (q.v.). Antennaria dioica (also called Cat's-foot) is very frequent in dry mountain-pastures. All the three genera are represented in the United States, where Gnaphalium polycephalum has some repute in domestic medicine.