Erect stems, leafy 12–32-inches tall have 1–15 showy flower heads with numerous light-bluish ray flowers and a yellow disk. Note the long, sticky, glandular-tipped hairs on stems and phyllaries (use lens), and nearly even-sized leaves up the stem with ciliate hairs on the leaf margins. Also called Sticky Tall Fleabane.

FLOWERS: July–September. Clusters of flower heads from leaf axils and tip of stem. Heads have 75–150 blue to lavender, petal-like ray flowers, 3/8–3/4-inch (9–18 mm) long, 1 mm wide; phyllaries (underneath the head) have slender, curled tips, and are covered with glandular-tipped hairs.

LEAVES: Basal and alternate on stem. Basal leaves often wither by blooming, oval to spatula-shaped, 1 1/4–3 1/8-inches long (3–8 cm). Stem blades even-sized up the stem, lance-shaped to elliptic, bases clasp the stem, surfaces hairless to glandular-hairy, margins lined with ciliate hairs.

HABITAT: Sandy, gravelly soils, meadows; ponderosa-Douglas fir, spruce-aspen forests.

ELEVATION: 6,500–10,200 feet.

RANGE: AZ, CO, NM.

SIMILAR SPECIES: Two other nearly identical fleabanes in much the same habitat and range: Three-nerve Fleabane, E. subtrinervis, has coarse, nonglandular hairs on stems and phyllaries; Showy Fleabane, E. specisus, has hairless leaf surfaces and phyllaries.

NM COUNTIES: Western half of NM in mid- to high-elevation habitats: Bernalillo, Catron, Dona Ana, Grant, Hidalgo, Lincoln, Los Alamos, Mora, Otero, Rio Arriba, San Miguel, San Miguel, Sandoval, Santa Fe, Sierra, Socorro, Taos, Torrance, Valencia.