Alternate name: Woman's-tobacco

Family: Asteraceae, Aster view all from this family

Description A low, colony-forming plant, spreading by runners, with basal leaves and erect stems, each bearing a terminal cluster of fuzzy, rayless flower heads.
Flowers: Head to 3/8" (1 cm) long; disk flowers bristly; bracts green, white-tipped, sometimes pinkish toward base.
Leaves: To 2 1/2" (6 cm) long, 1 1/2" (4 cm) wide; those at base and at ends of runners largest, with usually 3 or 5 obvious veins, in rosettes, densely white-woolly below, much less so or even hairless above, ovate to obovate; those on stem scattered, much narrower.
Fruit: Seed-like, tipped with bristles.
Height: 4-16" (10-40 cm).

Flower April-June.

Habitat Dry open woodlands, meadows, and rocky places.

Range Quebec and Maine south to Florida, west to Louisiana, and north to Minnesota.

Discussion The crowded flower heads are thought to resemble a cat's paw, hence the common name. Male and the showier female flowers are on different plants. In some species of pussytoes the male flower heads are rare, even unknown, the female flower heads producing seeds without pollination. Most of our many species of Antennaria are difficult to identify, but Plantain-leaf Pussytoes is not a problem, nor is the similar-leaved Single-head Pussytoes (A. solitaria), found from Pennsylvania west to Illinois and south to the Gulf of Mexico; as its common name indicates, each stem bears a single flower head.