Sweet Everlasting
“What is that sweet smell?” I wondered, as I walked the trail on our property with our lumbering Lab, Max. Just a subtle, gentle odor of something recognizable; perhaps the dog brushed against something as we walked. Ah, then I noticed it— Gnaphalium obtusifolium, recently renamed Pseudognaphalium obtusifolium, and commonly called sweet everlasting. This is one of my favorite end-of-summer native species of the Asteraceae family. And it’s more than a fragrant delight. Sweet everlasting has a solid history as medicinal ally. Linnaeus named this genus in 1753, according to Daniel Austin in Florida Ethnobotany . Native people mixed the plant with smoking tobacco, and even Julia Morton in Folk Remedies of the Low Country (1974) noted its use in pipes by “old timers” in the southeast. Sweet everlasting is notable near summer’s end and reaches 24 to 36 inches. The leaves are alternate, narrow and lancelet, lacking stalks. They are green above, white and hairy below. The differ...