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General:
Perennial herb from a fibrous-rooted, stout woody stem-base or short rhizome; stems erect, solitary, simple or rarely few branched, glabrous, 15-35 cm tall.
Leaves:
Basal leaves egg-shaped, stalked, 1.5-6 cm long including the stalk, 0.5-2.3 cm wide, regularly toothed, glabrous, usually purplish; lower stem leaves similar, few; upper stem leaves becoming more lanceolate and unstalked upwards, often purplish, conspicuously white-woolly tufted in the leaf axils, uppermost reduced to entire, purplish-tipped bracts.
Flowers:
Heads with ray and disk flowers, solitary or rarely 1-2 heads on white woolly-hairy stalks, some hairs often with prominent reddish crosswalls; involucres 7-11 mm tall; involucral bracts linear-lanceolate, purplish-tinged throughout, long soft-hairy below, rarely almost glabrous; bracteoles few, purplish-tinged; ray flowers yellow, mostly 6-14 mm long; disk flowers yellow.
Fruits:
Achenes oblong, nerved, glabrous; pappus of white hairlike bristles.
Notes:
This species was originally described as a subspecies of S. cymbalarioides (Calder & Tayl. 1965) and recently has been submerged within that species (Barkley 1994). It would appear, however, that if S. moresbiensis is to be treated as part of another species complex it would be with S. cymbalaria. The latter taxa have similar chromosome numbers, purplish-pigmented leaves and slightly overlapping ranges - differences markedly separating them from S. cymbalariodes. Recognition of S. moresbiensis at the species level (Douglas and Ruyle-Douglas 1978; Douglas 1982, Douglas et al. 1989) is easily justified when examining species differences among our other Senecio species.
Source: The Illustrated Flora of British Columbia
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