Appearance
Silver Ragwort is a very white-wooly, heat and drought tolerant evergreen subshrub growing to 0.5–1 m tall. The stems are stiff and woody at the base, densely branched, and covered in long, matted grey-white to white hairs. The leaves are pinnate or pinnatifid, 5–15 centimetres long and 3–7 centimetres broad, stiff, with oblong and obtuse segments, and like the stems, covered with long, thinly to thickly matted with grey-white to white hairs; the lower leaves are petiolate and more deeply lobed, the upper leaves sessile and less lobed. The tomentum is thickest on the underside of the leaves, and can become worn off on the upper side, leaving the top surface glabrous with age. The flowers are yellow, daisy-like in dense capitula 12–15 millimetres diameter, with central disc florets surrounded by a ring of 10–13 ray florets, and enclosed in a common whorl of bracts at the base of the capitulum. The seeds are cylindrical achenes.
Distribution
"Jacobaea maritima" is native to the western and central Mediterranean region, in northwest Africa, southern Europe, and the far west of Asia. It occurs primarily on cliffs and rocky coastal sites, more rarely inland.It is also naturalised further north in Europe and locally in North America.
Habitat
As with many other densely tomentose plants, the tomentum on the leaves is used by some species of bees for nest-building.Hybrids are known with "Jacobaea erucifolia" and "Jacobaea vulgaris"; the hybrid with "J. vulgaris" is fertile, producing a wide range of intermediate progeny.
Uses
"Jacobaea maritima" is widely used in horticulture for its silvery foliage. It is winter hardy in USDA Zones 8-10, tolerating winter temperatures down to -12° to -15 °C, tolerant of light shade but preferring full sun. In colder areas it is grown as an annual plant. Many cultivars have been selected for particularly dense silvery tomentum, such as 'Cirrus', 'New Look', 'Ramparts', 'Silverdust', 'Silver Filigree', and 'White Diamond'. It has been recommended in North America for its fire resistance resistance to browsing by deer, and its salt tolerance....hieroglyph snipped...The cultivar 'Silver Dust' has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.
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