Paperflower is an ascending to erect shrubby perennial growing to 2' tall with many densely white-tomentose stems rising from a woody caudex.  The leaves are alternate, linear and entire, white wooly when young and aging to a glabrous green.  The yellow heads are showy with cylindric involucres and bracts enclosed in dense wool.  There are 2 series of phyllaries, the outer ones which are lanceolate and soft-hairy, and the inner ones which are shorter and membranous.  There are 3-6 ray flowers with yellow ligules conspicuously 3-lobed which become pale, almost translucent, and papery when the flower ages, and 10-25 yellow disk flowers often strongly exserted and with ovate to lance-oblong pappus scales.  The fruit is a glabrous achene.  Paperflower grows on rocky desert mesas and slopes and sandy fans and washes from 2000' to 5000' in creosote bush scrub and joshua tree woodland in the eastern Mojave and northern Colorado Deserts, and blooms from April to June, and/or from October to December.

Click here for Latin name derivations: 1) Psilostrophe 2) cooperi.
Pronunciation: sy-LOS-tro-fee KOO-per-eye.
Click here for Botanical Term Meanings.