General: Perennial herb from a creeping rhizome; stems erect, solitary, branched above, with spreading, long hairs and stalked glands, at least above, 0.3-1.0 m tall.
Leaves: Basal leaves smaller than the others, usually deciduous by flowering time; stem leaves lanceolate, 5-15 cm long, 1-4 cm wide, unstalked, more or less clasping, glabrous above, sparsely hairy beneath, margins smooth to few toothed.
Flowers: Heads with ray and disk flowers, few to many in a branched, leafy, usually short inflorescence, bases glandular; involucres 7-11 mm tall; involucral bracts equal or subequal, linear to linear-lanceolate, with long-pointed tips, densely stalked-glandular, the outer leaflike, the inner often purplish; ray flowers 20-45, purple or violet, 8-15 mm long; disk flowers yellow.
Fruits: Achenes strongly 5-ribbed, sparsely hairy; pappus whitish to yellowish.
Moist to mesic meadows, streambanks, shrub thickets and forests in the lowland and montane zones; common throughout most of BC; N to AK, YT and NT, E to ON and S to MI, MN, MT, ID and OR.
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)
