It has rained and the weather has been mild this October, so Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) flowers again. Yarrow is a common plant in grassy and sunny spots, in meadows and roadsides. Stalks of plants that are flowering now are not as long as those in summer, maybe because they have less time to grow high.
The flowers seem to grow in umbels, the little branches that carry flowers all arrive at the same height. With 'real' umbellifers, members of the Apiaceae family, those branches depart all from the same spot at the top of the stalks or branches. Here it is different. Yarrow belongs to another plant family, Asteraceae.
Typical for Asteraceae are composite flowers. That what looks like a flower is in fact a flowerhead made from several small tubular and/or ligulate flowers. In Yarrow, tens of flower heads form together a kind of umbel. Every flower head has three or five ligular flowers with each a round white petal, and in their midst some cream-colored tubular flowers. So there are hundreds of flowers if you count them all.
The leaves are visible nearly all year round. If the grass is mowed the blade does not hurt them and later on the plant can produce new flowering stems. The leaves are finely divided, so it looks like there are hundreds of leaves also.