Psilocarphus elatior
species of plant
Psilocarphus elatior is a species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae known by the common names tall woollyheads, meadow woollyheads and tall woolly-marbles. It is native to the Pacific Northwest in western North America from Vancouver Island, where it is known from just a few occurrences, to northern California. It grows in seasonally moist spots such as meadows, spring seeps, and vernal pools.
This is a small erect annual herb growing up to about 15 centimeters tall with a pale silvery or gray-green branching stem coated in woolly or cobwebby fibers. The leaves are linear or lance-shaped and up to about 3.5 centimeters long. They are located along the stem and there are no basal leaves.
The inflorescence is a small, spherical flower head less than a centimeter wide located at the tip of the stem or in a leaf axils. It is a cluster of several tiny woolly disc flowers surrounded by leaflike bracts but no phyllaries. Each tiny flower is covered in a scale which is densely woolly with long white fibers, making the developing head appear cottony.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Psilocarphus elatior” is species of plant. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Psilocarphus, elatior and species, not as a finished interpretation.
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Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 28, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7255814. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
Scientific names, classifications and consensus can change while older terminology persists in catalogues and historical literature. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Psilocarphus elatior” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.