General: Perennial herb from a fibrous-rooted, short, erect woody stem-base; stems erect, solitary, branched above, sparsely to densely woolly-hairy, 20-70 cm tall.
Leaves: Basal leaves thick, somewhat succulent, narrowly oblanceolate to elliptic or nearly round, stalked, 6-25 cm long including the stalk, 1-6 cm wide, entire or sometimes iregularly toothed, hairy when young becoming less so with age; stem leaves similar, progressively reduced upwards, becoming unstalked.
Flowers: Heads with ray and disk flowers, several to numerous in a compact inflorescence; involucres 5-10 mm tall; involucral bracts lanceolate, hairless to moderately long-hairy, usually conspicuously black-tipped; bracteoles few, black-tipped; ray flowers yellow, rarely white or creamy; disk flowers yellow.
Fruits: Achenes oblong, ribbed, glabrous or coarse-hairy; pappus of white hairlike bristles.
Notes: Two poorly-defined varieties occur in BC. The var. ochroleucus has not been collected in BC since 1897.
1. Ray flowers white.............. var. ochroleucus (A. Gray) Cronq.
1. Ray flowers yellow................... var. exaltatus (Nutt.) Cronq.
Moist to dry grasslands, shrublands, forest openings and meadows in the steppe to lower subalpine zones; var. integerrimus common in S BC in and E of the Coast-Cascade Mountains, var. ochroleucus rare in SC and SE BC; E to SK and MN and S to CA.
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)
