Montana Field Guide

Rhizomatous perennial. Stems ascending to erect, 6–80 cm. Herbage glabrate, sparsely hairy on stems. Leaves basal (often deciduous) and cauline; blades ovate to lanceolate, 2–15 cm long, entire; the lower with broad petioles, sometimes sessile and clasping above. Inflorescence leafy paniculate with 1 to several heads; peduncles glabrous, puberulent or villous. Involucre campanulate, 6–15 mm high; phyllaries: outer lanceolate to oblanceolate, green, white-margined, sometimes foliaceous; inner narrower. Rays 15 to 60, blue or violet; ligules 6–18 mm long. Disk flowers 50 to 150, yellow; corollas 4–7 mm long. Achenes cylindric, 2–4 mm long, hairy (Lesica et al. 2012. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants. BRIT Press. Fort Worth, TX).

The three varieties in Montana include foliaceum, apricum (A. Gray) G.L. Nesom, and parryi (D.C. Eaton) G.L. Nesom. Lesica (2012) also treats S. cusickii (A. Gray) P. Lesica (ined.) as a variety of this species.

Moist areas across a wide elevational range (Hitchcock & Cronquist 1973; Dorn 1984) (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 bifarius, Bombus borealis, Bombus centralis, Bombus fervidus, Bombus flavifrons, Bombus huntii, Bombus mixtus, Bombus rufocinctus, Bombus sylvicola, Bombus ternarius, Bombus terricola, Bombus sitkensis, Bombus pensylvanicus, Bombus griseocollis, Bombus impatiens, Bombus insularis, Bombus suckleyi, Bombus bohemicus, and Bombus kirbiellus (Plath 1934, Heinrich 1976, Thorp et al. 1983, Colla and Dumesh 2010, Colla et al. 2011, Koch et al. 2012, Williams et al. 2014, Tripoldi and Szalanski 2015).