Flora of North America species comparison

often spreading or prostrate, usually branched throughout, usually reddish, ± loosely tomentose.

1–few, erect or ascending, openly branched distally, villous to scabrous with septate hairs and loosely tomentose, ± glabrate.

mostly cauline, sessile and often short-decurrent or proximal tapering to winged petioles, blades lanceolate to oblanceolate, 6–25 cm, margins coarsely dentate or pinnately lobed, lobes and teeth armed with short, weak spines, faces sparsely to densely hairy with jointed multicellular hairs and slender cobwebby hairs, resin-gland-dotted.

basal and proximal cauline, petiolate, blades oblanceolate or elliptic, 5–25 cm, margins entire or shallowly dentate to irregularly pinnately lobed;

distal cauline sessile, not decurrent, blades linear to lanceolate, gradually smaller, entire or dentate.

± spheric, 20–40 mm.

15–18 mm, subcylindric to ovoid or campanulate, usually longer than wide, even when pressed.

many;

corollas yellow, those of sterile florets linear, 3-lobed, not exceeding disc corollas, very slender, those of disc florets 19–24 mm.

40–100+, all fertile or peripheral sterile;

corollas purple (rarely white), those of sterile florets ± expanded and exceeding corollas of fertile florets, those of fertile florets 15–18 mm.

in several series, tightly overlapping, outer ovate with tightly appressed bases and spreading spine tips, inner lanceolate, tipped by pinnately divided spines more than 5 mm.

tips truncate, irregularly dentate or lobed.

disciform, borne singly, sessile, each subtended by involucre-like cluster of leaf-like bracts.

radiant or discoid, in few-headed corymbiform arrays, borne on leafy-bracted peduncles.

cylindric, slightly curved, 8–11 mm, with 20 prominent ribs, tipped by a 10-dentate rim, glabrous, attachment scars lateral;

pappi of 2 series of awns, outer 9–10 mm, smooth or ± roughened, inner 2–5 mm, roughened with short spreading hairs.

tan, 2.5–3 mm, finely hairy;

pappi 0 or of many unequal, sometimes caducous bristles 0.5–1 mm.

phyllaries: bodies lanceolate to ovate, loosely tomentose or glabrous, usually not fully covered by narrow appendages, these erect, overlapping, dark brown to black, flat, margins pectinately dissected into 6–8 pairs of wiry lobes.

= 22.

= 22 (Hungary), 44 (Hungary; Italy).