unknown hairy plant

[Diane Clement]

Can anyone help with the identification of this hairy little plant?  I'm guessing Cerastium sp??

[Oron Peri]

Diane,

Cerastium alpinum var. lanatum

[Diane Clement]

Diane,
Cerastium alpinum var. lanatum 

Thanks, Oron that was quick - you're not just a bulb man   

[Oron Peri]

Well Diane..
when bulbs are dormant i have time to look at 'weeds'....

[Lesley Cox]

It's a "good" cerastium, compared with the other which is a menace and will break up rock walls. C. tomentosum I think it's called.

[Anthony Darby]

C. tomentosum is aka snow in summer. A real menace in the garden.

[Tim Ingram]

I had this little plant from Rick Lambert at the Summer Show South. I like to pretend that it is a Haastia! Farrer says of Cerastium alpinum (which occurs on British mountains and would a nice little plant to find) that 'it is paradoxically of less easy culture than many of its foreign cousins'. There sound to be some fine plants in the genus, obscured by the rampant 'snow-in-summer', although I have seen even this combining beautifully in a wall with campanula in David Hoare's garden.

[Lesley Cox]

It does seed about but is no problem to remove any you don't want. Paradoxically, having seeded nicely into my previous raised beds among the crocuses, I now find myself without it so will keep an eye out on the next seedlists.

"Snow-in-Summer" I have also seen applied to the annual Euphorbia marginata, low, green and heavily variegated with white. I haven't seen the flower head.