Montana Field Guide

Fibrous-rooted perennial herbs. Stems erect, often branched, 15–60 cm, winged-decurrent from leaf bases. Herbage puberulent, minutely punctate. Leaves cauline, petiolate below, sessile above; basal withered at flowering; blades lanceolate, entire to obscurely dentate, 2–10 cm, reduced upward. Inflorescence corymbiform. Heads radiate; involucre reflexed; phyllaries subequal in 2 or 3 series, 10–15 mm long, narrowly lanceolate, green, puberulent; receptacle hemispheric, naked, pitted. Ray flowers 8 to 21, female, yellow, reflexed; ligules 10–15 mm long. Disk flowers numerous, fertile; corolla yellow, 2–4 mm long, glandular, puberulent above, tube shorter than the throat; style branches dilated. Pappus of 5 to 10 aristate, scarious scales. Achenes obconic, 4- to 5-angled, 1–2 mm long, pubescent (Lesica et al. 2012. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants. BRIT Press. Fort Worth, TX).

Moist, often gravelly soil along streams, wetlands, roadsides; plains, valleys (Lesica et al. 2012. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants. BRIT Press. Fort Worth, TX).

POLLINATORS
The following animal species have been reported as pollinators of this plant species or its genus where their geographic ranges overlap: Bombus bifarius, Bombus frigidus, Bombus sylvicola, Bombus impatiens, and Bombus insularis (Thorp et al. 1983, Colla and Dumesh 2010, Pyke et al. 2012, Williams et al. 2014).