Montana Field Guide

Strongly rhizomatous. Stems erect, simple, 25–90 cm. Herbage glabrate to puberulent, at least at mid-stem and above. Leaves cauline, sessile or subsessile; blades narrowly lanceolate, serrate, 4–10 cm long, only gradually reduced upward. Inflorescence narrowly to broadly pyramidal; heads secund on spreading branches. Involucres narrowly campanulate, 3–5 mm high; phyllaries linear-lanceolate, whitish, puberulent. Rays 10 to 16; ligules 1–3 mm long. Disk flowers 5 to 9; corollas 3–4 mm long. Achenes ca. 1 mm long, strigose (Lesica et al. 2012. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants. BRIT Press. Fort Worth, TX).

In Montana we have varieties salebrosa and gilvocanescens Rydb.

Moist soil of meadows, thickets, streambanks, open forest, fields, roadsides (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 vagans, Bombus appositus, Bombus bifarius, Bombus borealis, Bombus fervidus, Bombus flavifrons, Bombus huntii, Bombus melanopygus, Bombus mixtus, Bombus nevadensis, Bombus rufocinctus, Bombus ternarius, Bombus terricola, Bombus sitkensis, Bombus occidentalis, Bombus pensylvanicus, Bombus bimaculatus, Bombus griseocollis, Bombus impatiens, Bombus insularis, Bombus suckleyi, Bombus bohemicus, Bombus flavidus, and Bombus kirbiellus (Plath 1934, Heinrich 1976, Thorp et al. 1983, Johnson 1986, Shaw and Taylor 1986, Mayer et al. 2000, Colla and Dumesh 2010, Colla et al. 2011, Koch et al. 2012, Williams et al. 2014, Tripoldi and Szalanski 2015).