Stemodia Species, Creeping Silver Cenizo, Gray Woolly Twintip, Silverleaf Stemodia, Woolly Stemodia

Thousands of these plants appeared in my wildscape last autumn. The silver rosettes seemed attractive, so I left them to show me what the...Read Morey were. In the spring, I left them in the area with access to deer, but dug them up everywhere else, since they were growing very aggressively.

We have seldom had rain in far SW Montgomery County, Texas since the winter, and as the ground dried up, so did the Stemodia (which the deer hadn't liked), and I was left with blackened mounds where the Stemodia had overpowered the diverse native groundcover that I had established over the past 9 years.

In conversation with a forestry student in Nagcodoches in April, I learned that Stemodia tomentosa was behaving the same way up there this year.

I would recommend that any Stemodia tomentosa plant kept for its sculptural stems and silver foliage be prevented from setting seed!

Wooley Stemodia is a grayish green groundcover that can be controlled in a small space. Looks great with other burgandy plants or purpl...Read Moree and blue flowers. A thick matt that controls weeds and is very easy to proprogate by layering. After the first cold spell I cut it back to the ground and it quickly fills back in by April. Does not mind sprawling across hot Texas sidewalks.

Silverleaf Stemodia, Creeping Silver Cenizo,
Stemodia tomentosa, is Endemic to Texas.