Flora of North America species comparison

simple or often branched from base, forming rounded bushy plants, gray-tomentose.

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

gray-tomentose and scabrous to short-bristly;

basal and proximal cauline petiolate or tapered to base, usually absent at anthesis, blades 5–15 cm, margins pinnately lobed or dissected;

cauline long-decurrent, blades linear to oblong, 1–10 cm, entire.

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, 13–17 mm, loosely cobwebby-tomentose or becoming glabrous.

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

many;

corollas yellow, all ± equal, 13–20 mm;

sterile florets slender, inconspicuous.

40–100+, all fertile;

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

appendages scarious, obtuse or abruptly spine tipped.

tips truncate, irregularly dentate or lobed.

disciform, borne singly or in open leafy arrays, long-pedunculate.

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

dimorphic, 2–3 mm, glabrous, outer dark brown, without pappi, inner white or light brown, mottled;

pappi of many white, unequal bristles 2–4 mm, fine.

tan, 2.5–3 mm, finely hairy;

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

phyllaries: bodies pale green, ovate, appendages stramineous to brown, each with palmately radiating cluster of spines, and stout central spine 10–25 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.

= 16.

= 22, 44.