Montana Field Guide

Rhizomatous. Stems ascending to erect, simple, 10–60 cm, sometimes clustered. Herbage: leaves glabrous, minutely ciliate; the inflorescence glabrate to puberulent. Leaves cauline, often also basal; basal petiolate; blades oblanceolate, entire to serrate, 3–12 cm long, usually 3-veined; cauline gradually reduced and becoming sessile upward. Inflorescence pyramidal to ovoid with spreading branches. Involucres campanulate, 2–5 mm high; phyllaries lanceolate to ovate, sometimes ciliate. Rays 7 to 14; ligules 1–3 mm long. Disk flowers 8 to 20; corollas 3–4 mm long. Achenes 1–2 mm long, glabrous to strigose (Lesica et al. 2012. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants. BRIT Press. Fort Worth, TX).

Grasslands, meadows, fields, open forest; plains, valleys, montane, rarely higher (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).