Pluchea sericea
Arrowweed
Family: Asteraceae
Large shrub, evergreen upright to 10’ high. Each clump can spread about 15’ wide, but these plants sucker by rhizomes, and run like a bamboo spreading almost indefinitely. Easily controlled if you don’t want it to grow in any particular area—just tug up the new stems as they emerge. They also tend to spread in moist soil, so their growth can be controlled by where their watering occurs. Great screen plant. Purple to lavender nectar-rich flowers most heavily bloom February through May, though they can flush out any time of year.
Grow in full sun to shade, moderate to regular water, though they can tolerate periods of drought once established. These plants are hardy to about 20° F.
The flowers are used by numerous native bees, butterflies, hummingbirds and more. The cottony seed heads are used by birds for nesting. Larval host for the Everlasting Bud Moth (Eublemma minima), the Southern Emerald (Synchlora frondaria), Mousy Plume Moth (Lioptilodes albistriolatus), and the noctuid moth Schinia intrabilis. Seeds are eaten by granivorous birds. The plant makes a great habitat for all sorts of wildlife due to its colonizing nature.
The leaves are chewed for throat irritations, taken internally for diarrhea, the root for indigestion and stomachache, bark as a wash for sore eyes, the roots are roasted and eaten, the stems are used as a building material and for thatch, weaving, arrows, used in tanning hides, and used as spindles for cotton. A gum resin that exudes from the plant is used by the O’odham people to make a mending glue for broken pottery.
Pluchea is named for Noel-Antoine Pluche (1688-1761) a French naturalist, while sericea means silky. The genus Pluchea has about 60 species native to North and South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia.
Found on floodplains, stream banks and along dunes and sand flats from below 3,000 ft. in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Nevada, Utah, on the borderlands of the US and Mexico, and dipping farther down into Baja California.
Arrowweed spreads almost like a bamboo. Photo by aaralar on iNaturalist
Arrowweed will be buzzing with many insects when blooming, photo by R.J. Adams, iNaturalist
Pluchea odorata is a related species that is much smaller, and often an annual (sometimes perennial). It grows in moist, marshy, often saline wetlands. Photo by Kristen Meyer, iNaturalist.