Leontopodium leontopodinum - Yellowish Edelweiss

Yellowish Edelweiss is a perennial herb with stems erect and firm, 5-15 cm tall, with 4-8 remote leaves, ash-colored woolly, sometimes becoming hairless in lower half. Flower-heads are 5-7, heterogamous and unisexual-dioecious, densely aggregated, 5-7 mm in diameter; bracteal leaves distinct, oblong-elliptic or lanceshaped, forming rather regular multiradiate star of 1.5-2 cm in diameter, below ash-colored woolly, above loosely woolly, pallid yellow, sometimes even ash- to sulfur-colored in dried plant. Phyllaries are lanceshaped, 4-5 mm, below yellowish woolly or greenish, with prominent brown or almost black shiny tip. Flowers are 3-4 mm. Leaves are ash-colored woolly on both surfaces, sometimes greenish hairless below, without a distinct vein; stem leaves oblong, lingulate, lanceshaped, or linear-lanceshaped, 10-250 x 2-4 mm, tip blunt or pointed. Rosette leaves are oblong-spoon-shaped or narrowly oblong, 20-40 x 2-4.5 mm, narrowed to sheath. Seedpods are hairless or papillose, pappus dirty white, in sterile bisexual florets 3-5 mm, in female florets 4-5 mm. Yellowish Edelweiss is found in humid or dry meadows, stony fields of slopes, at altitudes of 2200-5000 m, Afghanistan to Siberia and West Himalaya. Flowering: May-August.