General: Perennial herb from a fibrous-rooted, short, thick, ascending or horizontal rhizome; stems erect, solitary, branched above, glabrous or sparsely woolly-hairy, 10-80 cm tall.
Leaves: Basal leaves relatively thick, lanceolate, oblanceolate to elliptic or nearly egg-shaped, stalked, the stalks sometimes winged, 2-21 cm long including the stalk, 0.5-4.5 cm wide, at least some regularly finely to coarsely toothed, thinly woolly-hairy when young but glabrous or nearly so by flowering time; stem leaves similar, lanceolate, progressively reduced upwards, becoming unstalked.
Flowers: Heads with ray and disk flowers, few to many in a compact to open flat-topped inflorescence; involucres 5-9 mm tall; involucral bracts lanceolate, woolly-hairy below, hairy at the tips, conspicuously black-tipped; bracteoles few, black-tipped; ray flowers yellow, mostly 7-15 mm long; disk flowers yellow.
Fruits: Achenes oblong, ribbed, glabrous or coarse-hairy; pappus of white hairlike bristles.
Moist to dry meadows and rocky slopes in the subalpine and alpine zones; common throughout BC in and E of the Coast-Cascade Mountains; N to AK, YT and NT E to AB and S to WY and N WA.
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)
