Montana Field Guide

Rhizomatous perennial. Stems erect to ascending, 15–60 cm. Herbage glabrate. Leaves basal and cauline, petiolate below; blades linear to lanceolate, 3–12 cm long, entire; the upper sessile and narrower. Inflorescence open-paniculate with few heads; peduncles glabrate to densely strigose. Involucre campanulate, 6–9 mm high; phyllaries linear-oblanceolate, imbricate, green with white bases, glabrous to ciliate. Rays 15 to 40, blue or violet; ligules 7–15 mm long. Disk flowers 30 to 80, yellow becoming purple; corollas 4–8 mm long. Achenes cylindric, 2–4 mm long, hairy (Lesica et al. 2012. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants. BRIT Press. Fort Worth, TX).

Our plants are variety spathulatum.

Wet meadows, thickets, fens, open forest; valleys to subalpine (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).