Anaphalis margaritacea (L.) Benth., Pearly Everlasting

Account Summary

This decorative and easy to grow rhizomatous perennial, up to 100 cm tall, with greenish-grey, simple leaves produces dense umbel-like corymbs of small, 9-12 mm diameter, pearly-white, papery flowerheads with yellowish centres from July to September. The species is thought to be mainly dioecious, producing separate male and female plants, although bisexual (hermaphrodite) plants are also reported. The latter are said to have a great predominance of one sex or the other on each plant. Sell & Murrell (2006) describe a situation where otherwise female plants have flowerheads, "without anthers except for a few central bisexual flowers." More work is required to determine for certain if A. margaritacea is dioecious, partially dioecious, or not (Stace & Crawley 2015).

It is a native of N America and NE Asia and was introduced to gardens in B & I around the end of the 16th or the 17th century ("before 1596" according to Buczacki (2007), or 1698, according to Stace & Crawley 2015). In Britain, it regularly escapes or is discarded from gardens and can establish and become naturalised in disturbed waste ground or in short damp grassland on roadside verges or along laneways, or riverbanks, in quarries and the like. It is widely, if thinly scattered, except in S Wales where it appears most frequently.

In Ireland, A. margaritacea is very rarely recorded, but generally it appears in similar rough grassland situations to those it colonises in Britain. It has been recorded at least once in twelve Irish VCs, but most of these reports were 19th century. Cat Alien Pl Ir reported just three 20th century records, to which this solitary Fermanagh record is an addition. Since the plant remains quite a popular garden subject, the current author (RSF) cannot account for the paucity of Irish records of this garden escape. There is a voucher of Mackechnie's Fermanagh plant in E.

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