E-Flora BC: Electronic Atlas of the Flora of British Columbia

General:
Perennial herb, mat-forming with stolons 2-4.5 cm long; stems erect, few, simple, glandular, 2-16 cm tall.

Leaves:
Basal leaves spoon-shaped to oblanceolate, gradually stalked, 5-20 mm long, 2-5 mm wide, grey woolly-hairy to glabrate below, usually green glabrous or glabrescent above, 1-nerved; stem leaves similar, becoming unstalked, linear, reduced upwards with prominent papery tips.

Flowers:
Heads solitary (rarely 2-3), terminal; involucres of 2 types, the female ones 4-8 mm tall with hairy bases, the male ones similar, 3.5-7 mm tall; involucral bracts lanceolate, the upper papery portion brown, dark brown, black or olivaceous; female flowers 3.5-4.0 mm long, male flowers 2.5-3.5 mm long.

Fruits:
Female achenes 1-1.4 mm long, usually glabrous, the pappus white with hairlike bristles, 4-5 mm long; male pappus hairs club-shaped and toothed at the the tips, 2.5-3.5 mm long.

Notes:
Two subspecies have recently been recognized for YT (Bayer 1996). Both taxa are also found in BC but often are indistinguishable in herbaria material since separation depends mainly on the presence or absence of male flowers. Female and male plants are equally common in populations of the ssp. monocephala while male plants are lacking in the strictly northern ssp. angustata. The collecter should make a note of this feature in the field if the separation recognized by Bayer and Stebbins (1993) is desired. Only the ssp. monocephala may sometimes be verified in the herbaria.