General: Perennial herb from a slender rhizome; stems several to many, ascending to decumbent, sparsely to copiously short-hairy, simple to branched above, 3-50 cm tall.
Leaves: Basal leaves soon deciduous; stem leaves usually reduced below, the middle ones unstalked, oblanceolate, 1.5-10 cm long, 4-35 mm wide, sparsely to copiously short-hairy on the lower surfaces, with few to many small teeth or entire.
Flowers: Heads with ray and disk flowers, solitary to many in a compact inflorescence; involucres 6-16 mm tall; involucral bracts more or less graduated in several series, oblong or lance-oblong to linear, abruptly sharp-pointed to with long-pointed tips, fine-hairy on the back or rarely glabrous, thin, dry and papery below, evidently or obscurely green-tipped and more or less purple-margined or suffused white-purple; ray flowers 10-25, purple, 8-15 mm long; disk flowers yellow, 5.5-7.6 mm long, the tube equal or barely exceeding the slender limb.
Fruits: Achenes strongly about 8-ribbed, sparsely stiff-hairy; pappus deep brownish, rarely yellowish or white.
Mesic to dry gravelly slopes from the upper montane to alpine zones; common in BC in and E of the Coast-Cascade Mountains, rare on C Vancouver Island, absent along the coast and in WC BC; N to AK, YT and NT, E to SE AB and S to WY, ID, NW OR and NW 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)