Flora of North America species comparison

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

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, gradually smaller, blades linear to lanceolate, entire or dentate.

ovoid to campanulate or hemispheric, 15–18 mm, usually ± as wide as high.

40–100+, all fertile;

corollas purple (rarely white), 15–18 mm.

tips truncate, irregularly dentate or lobed.

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

tan, 2.5–3 mm, finely hairy;

pappi of many blackish, unequal, sometimes deciduous bristles 0.5–1 mm.

phyllaries: bodies lanceolate to ovate, loosely tomentose or glabrous, bases usually ± concealed by expanded appendages, appendages erect, overlapping, dark brown to black, flat, margins pectinately dissected into numerous wiry lobes.

= 22, 44.