This white daisy is “lazy” because the buds nod and the rays close at night and often don’t open before noon. Each branching stem, 4–20-inches long, sprawling to erect, bears one flower head. Note soft hairs cover the leaves, stems, and phyllaries beneath the ray flowers, and the bottom of the white rays often has a red stripe.

FLOWERS: April–July. White, 1/2–1 1/2-inches wide (12–38 mm) with 20–40 petal-like ray flowers 3/16–3/8-inch long (5–10 mm), often with lavender or red-striped undersides and tinged with pink, sometimes in 2 stacked rows around the disk; disk flowers yellow, base with minute scales, not bristly hairs, (pappus) (use lens); phyllaries lance-shaped to narrow, hairy, nearly equal in length, in 3–4 rows.

LEAVES: Alternate. Blades highly variable in size and shape, linear to spatula-shaped with several lobes, to 1 5/8-inches long (4 cm) and 3/4-inch wide (20 mm), narrowing to the base, surfaces not gland-dotted (use lens).

HABITAT: Sandy, clay, alkaline, gypsum, silty soils, disturbed areas; desert grasslands and scrub, pinion-juniper woodlands.

ELEVATION: 3,100–6,600 feet.

RANGE: AZ, NM, OK, TX.

SIMILAR SPECIES: 3 species in NM. A. skirrhobasis, in the se quarter of NM, with the largest flowers of the 3, has 25–45 white to pinkish rays 5/16–3/4-inch long (8–18 mm), usually with red or striped undersides, and often lobed leaves. A. riddellii, in the southern half of NM, is a clumping perennial  with woody stems that reach 20-inches high, has the most rays, 40–75, each 3/16–3/8-inch long (5–10 mm), and hairless stems below the flowers. Annual Townsend Daisy, Townsendia annua, is similar but the buds don’t nod, it has no lobed leaves, and the phyllaries are unequal in length in  3–4 rows.

NM COUNTIES: Widespread in cent. and so. NM at low- to mid-elevation, arid habitats: Bernalillo, Chaves, Cibola, Curry, De Baca, Dona Ana, Eddy, Grant, Hidalgo, Lea, Lincoln, Luna, Otero, Quay, Sandoval, Santa Fe, Sierra, Socorro, Valencia.