It's Sweet Everlasting, Rabbit Tobacco, Pseudognaphalium obtusifolium. The flowers never fully open for blooming, but they open to release the fluffy, airborne seeds. It's a host plant for Painted Lady Butterflies.

Cool info, Jay! ^^^^^

I vote for keeping this plant, prairiemoon, if you don't actually hate it -- as a host plant it has value!! It may not knock your sox off as a blooming machine, but it isn't offensive (to me). Butterflies are not nearly as numerous as they used to be, sadly. I'm in Central MA.

Pick the flowers before they open, and they will open and dry for decoration,and they last forever. I'm letting my 1 plant go to seed. I want more.

😁

So, it's not a weed? It's a perennial and not a native? I'll look up the name. Thanks Jay for that information. Jay do you collect the seed, or just let it reseed?

Roxanna - No, I don't actually hate it and the seedlings in the spring are not that hard to pull out. I can pick and choose where I have room to leave it. I haven't seen any butterflies on it though. I saw ONE single Monarch today. *sigh* Last year I had a dozen or so on the Aster. And I have a lot of milkweed too.

It can be either an annual, or a biennial. Plants that bloom in the 1st year are smaller. I'll collect a few seeds, but it should have vollunteers.

I was just out there looking and I had 8 plants that grew to full size. They are crowding a few things now, but next year, I'll keep fewer. They do reseed nicely.

It is native to you.

I did look it up and ow, Floral, you are right, it's native to New England! Yay! I definitely will be encouraging this plant in more places than I had it this year. I have too many in the location it is this year, but sprinkled around the garden, will work fine. Host for butterfly, native plant, reseeds gently, neat, works like a filler at about 12-18 inch height.

Here is a source for seed and in the photo it is taller than mine. Here it is compact and rounded.

Sweet Everlasting

So, it's not a weed?

and ===

This year there was a lot. I pulled a lot of them but still ended up with a few that I just let grow.

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one definition of a weed is that you spent all summer pulling out the other million plants.. to just leave these few ... in my world.. that could be a problem .. and a weed ...

i like jays idea of cutting them and taking them inside to limit seed dispersion ...

seed has to ripen after the flower is pollinated .... you should be able to find that number to guess how long you can leave them before deadheading .... or ripping out ...

ken