https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/6289768

Have you been a victim of the common name trap? It happens! After taking photos of a plant in San Diego County which you may think of as pearly everlasting, if you select the common name “pearly everlasting” as the ID when you upload to iNat, you will have identified the plant as Anaphalis margaritacea, the species with that common name on iNat. Anaphalis margaritacea is common in Northern California and other states. What many folks in San Diego call pearly everlasting is not the same plant as what folks in Oregon or Washington call pearly everlasting. There isn’t even consensus in San Diego about common names for many of our plants. This is one of the reasons that scientific names are preferred to confidently communicate what plant is intended. Sometimes called California pearly everlasting, Pseudognaphalium californicum is common from the coast up into the mountains of San Diego County. We have several other species in the genus Pseudognaphalium and the common names most often used for them may not even include “everlasting” in them, such as Pseudognaphalium biolettii which has the common name two-colored rabbit tobacco on iNat, but is also called bicolor cudweed. Even though the scientific name may be hard to spell, using it is the only accurate way to avoid the confusion brought about by use of common names!