General: plant 30-100 cm tall. Growth habit: Stout, unbranched perennial from strong, creeping rhizomes. Stems: erect, single, strongly glandular above.
Leaves: alternate, firm, sharply toothed, the lowermost ones relatively small, tapering to the more or less stalked base, mostly soon withering, the others ample, 6-15 cm long and 2-6 cm wide, ovate or elliptic, stalkless.
Flowerheads: blue or violet with 12-35 rays 10-15 mm long. Heads few-many in open, rounded to flat-topped cluster. Involucre 9-12 mm high, densely glandular, its bracts in 5 overlapping rows, with fairly broad paper-textured bases tapering to the pointed, bent-outward green tips.
July-September.
Fruits: hairless achenes, veined with pappus of long, whitish, hair-like bristles.
Distribution
Common in open woods, from the foothills to moderate elevations in the mountains in w., c. and s. parts of MT. Also in n. WY, c. ID, n.e. OR, and n. to B.C. and Yukon.
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No edibility data
No medicinal data
