Edelweiss

You can't help but think of the movie, "The Sound of Music" when you see this unusual flower. The song "Edelweiss", which is about the flower, is from Rodgers and Hammerstein's 1959 musical The Sound of Music, which takes place in Salzburg, Austria, before World War II. I've only seen this plant in two places in Calgary, neither wild. One plant was in someone's garden, and the plant in this photo was photographed in front of someone's gravestone in St. Mary's Cemetery.

"The plant is unequally distributed and prefers rocky limestone places at about 1800–3000 m altitude. It is non toxic, and has been used traditionally in folk medicine as a remedy against abdominal and respiratory diseases. The dense hair appears to be an adaptation to high altitudes, protecting the plant from cold, aridity and ultraviolet radiation. As a scarce short-lived flower found in remote mountain areas, the plant has been used as a symbol for alpinism, for rugged beauty and purity associated with the Alps, and as a national symbol especially of Austria and of Switzerland.

Leaves and flowers are covered with white hairs and appear woolly (tomentose). Flowering stalks of Edelweiss can grow to a size of 3–20 cm (in cultivation, up to 40 cm). Each bloom consists of five to six small yellow clustered spikelet-florets (5 mm) surrounded by fuzzy white "petals" (technically, bracts) in a double star formation. The flowers bloom between July and September."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leontopodium_alpinum