General: Perennial herb from a short, often stout rhizome; stems erect, simple or sometimes branched, few to several, sparsely to moderately short or long soft-hairy, sometimes sparsely glandular-hairy above, exuding milky juice when broken, 3-45 cm tall.
Leaves: Basal leaves persistent, tufted, narrowly elliptic, 1-16 cm long, 0.4-3.0 cm wide, entire or nearly so; stem leaves few or lacking, reduced, bractlike.
Flowers: Heads with strap-shaped flowers, solitary or several; involucres 5-10 mm tall; involucral bracts linear-lanceolate, subequal, greyish, long soft-hairy, without glandular hairs; ray flowers yellow.
Fruits: Achenes nerved, 2-3 mm long; pappus tawny or sometimes white.
Notes: Easily confused with H. gracile which has glandular-tipped hairs on the stalks of the heads and involucres.
Moist to mesic meadows, streambanks and talus slopes in the subalpine to the alpine zones; widespread in BC, especially common in N BC; amphiberingian, N to AK, YT and NT and E to AB.
The table below shows the species-specific information calculated from original data (BEC database) provided by the BC Ministry of Forests and Range. (Updated August, 2013)