General: Perennial herb from a short to moderate taproot; stems erect or ascending, solitary, usually simple, hairy by flowering time, 4-15 cm tall.
Leaves: Basal leaves egg-shaped, rounded or spoon-shaped, fleshy, almost 1 mm thick, 1-6 cm long including the stalk, 0.3-1.5 cm wide, entire, rarely lobed, wavy-margined or rarely irregularly toothed, glabrous or sometimes moderately white woolly-hairy; stem leaves reduced upwards, oblong to lanceolate, white woolly-hairy in the leaf axils, round-toothed to sharply and deeply cut, uppermost reduced to entire purplish-tipped bracts.
Flowers: Heads with ray and disk flowers, usually solitary (rarely up to 5) on white woolly-hairy stalks; involucres 8-11 mm tall; involucral bracts linear-lanceolate, with long-pointed tips, with white or yellowish hairs, purplish-tinged, especially at the tips, margins translucent; bracteoles few, usually purplish-tipped; ray flowers yellow, mostly 6-16; disk flowers yellow.
Fruits: Achenes oblong, ribbed, glabrous; pappus of white hairlike bristles.
Notes: For a comprehensive discussion of the history of this complex group of species, which includes S. conterminus, S. cymbalarioides, S. cymbalaria, S. hyperborealis and S. ogotorukensis, see Douglas (1982).
If more than one illustration is
available for a species (e.g., separate illustrations were provided for two
subspecies) then links to the separate images will be provided below.
Note that individual subspecies or varietal illustrations are not always available.
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)