Patchouli artichoke (scientific name: Ageratum conyzoides? L.): annual herb, 50-100 centimeters high, and sometimes less than 10 centimeters. No obvious main root. Stem stout, basal diameter 4 mm, unbranched or branched from base or from above middle. All stem branches reddish, or distally green, white dusty pubescent or distally densely spreading tomentose. Leaves opposite, sometimes alternate distally, ovate or oblong, sometimes all leaves of plant small, basally ternate or obscurely pentate-veined. Heads 4-18 in usually dense corymbose inflorescences at stem apex, involucre campanulate or hemispherical, 5 mm wide. Involucral bracts 2-layered, oblong or lanceolate-oblong. Corolla 1.5-2.5 mm long, outside glabrous or apically dusty puberulent, limb 5-lobed, lavender. Achenes black-brown, 5-angled. Flowering and fruiting throughout the year.

Generally white, and purple flowers.

This species has many aliases, Guangdong called salted shrimp flower, white flower grass, white hairy bitter, white flower stinking grass, Yunnan called Chongyang grass, Guizhou called pus bubble grass, green ascending grass, Guangxi called stinking stove grass. Yunnan Baoshan is also called water ding medicine. China's folk with the whole grass to treat colds and fever, healing sores and eczema, traumatic bleeding, burns and so on.