Maryland Native Groundcover

 Antennaria plantaginifolia – Plantain Pussytoes

Antennaria plantaginifolia, also called Plantain Pussytoes is best grown in lean, gritty to rocky, dry to medium moisture, well-drained soils in full sun. Does not do well in fertile, humusy soils, particularly if drainage is poor. In optimum growing conditions, however, it can spread by stolons to form an attractive ground cover. Antennaria plantaginifolia, commonly called pussytoes, plantain-leaved pussytoes, plantain-leaved everlasting and ladies’ tobacco, typically grows in acid soils on dry or rocky slopes, prairies and glades throughout the State.

It is a stoloniferous, mat-forming, woolly plant, with all of the leaves and flower stalks being woolly and grayish. Somewhat non-showy, fuzzy, whitish flower heads tinged with pink bloom in spring. Flowers are crowded into terminal clusters (corymbs) atop small-leaved flowering stems rising to 10″ high from a basal rosette of paddle-shaped leaves (to 3″ long). Plants are dioecious (male and female flowers on separate plants), with male flowers typically appearing on shorter flower stalks.

Host plant to the American Lady Butterfly.

Antennaria plantaginifolia flowering