PHEOS, in Botany, a name which Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and others, give to a plant used by fullers in dressing their clothes, and of which there were two kinds, a smaller called simply pheos, and a larger called hippopheos. This plant is sometimes called phleos; and is thus confounded with a kind of marsh cudweed, or gnaphalium, called also by that name; but it may always be discovered which of the two plants an author means, by observing the sense in which the word is used, and the use to which the plant was put. The phleos, properly so called, that is, the cudweed, was used to stuff beds and other such things, and to pack up with earthen vessels to prevent their breaking; but the pheos, improperly called phleos, only about cloths: this was, however, also called stabe and cnuphon.