Woolly Plantain

Woolly plantain is a small plant with a thin taproot and usually covered in woolly hairs. It can be an annual, a winter annual, a biennial, and might rarely grow as a short-lived perennial. They can have simple crown or a caudex with as many as four branches, each producing a rosette of narrow leaves. It can have a very short true stem up to 4 centimeters (1.6 in) long, but can also lack one. Almost all the leaves are basal, with the winter rosette leaves just 0.3 to 3 cm long. The later, principal leaves are linear-oblanceolate, a narrow and almost grass-like reversed spear head. Each typically measuring 2 to 15 centimeters (1–6 in) long, though rarely reaching 20 cm (8 in). They are just 0.5–7 millimeters wide, though sometimes as much as 15 mm. Leaf tips are sharply pointed to long and drawn out and the leaf may have one to three noticeable veins. When flowering each plant grows 1 to 20 inflorescences that are spikes, the flowers being attached directly to the main stem rather than by a peduncle. Each spike is atop a scape, a leafless flower stem, 4 to 24 centimeters (1.6–9.4 in) tall, but occasionally just 1 cm or as much as 26 cm. The spikes are densely packed with tiny flowers and 1 to 15 cm (0.5–6 in) long, though typically 5 to 10 cm (2–4 in). …

In the northern hemisphere woolly plantain is native to western Canada, most of the contiguous United States, and northern Mexico. In South America it is native to much of Argentina. It is not found in the tropical areas of the Americas between these two highly disjunct populations. It has been found in Kentucky, but is not thought to be native to the state and has also been found growing in both Germany and Italy. In Canada it grows in the four western provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia. In US it is native to all the contiguous states except for Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. In Mexico it is found in the northern states of Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Nuevo León.