Biennuals or short-lived perennials, 3–15 cm; usually fibrous-rooted, sometimes taprooted, caudices lignescent, rarely branched. Stems first erect (greenish proximally; usually single, simple), then producing herbaceous, leafy, prostrate runners (usually with rooting plantlets at tips, populations often becoming clonal mats), strigose (often sparsely; hairs antrorsely appressed, consistent in orientation), sometimes slightly glandular distally. Leaves basal (often persistent) and cauline; basal blades broadly oblanceolate to elliptic, 20–55 × 3–9 mm, cauline abruptly reduced distally, margins entire or dentate, faces strigose, eglandular. Heads 1(–3, on proximal branches). Involucres 3–5 × 6–13 mm. Phyllaries in 2–3 series, strigose to loosely hirsute, minutely glandular. Ray florets 40–125; corollas white, often with an abaxial midstripe, often drying lilac, 4–10 mm, laminae not coiling or reflexing. Disc corollas 2–3.5 mm. Cypselae 0.8–1.3 mm, 2-nerved, faces sparsely strigose; pappi: outer of setae, inner of 10–17 bristles. 2n = 18, 27, 36, 45, 54.
Home