WILDFLOWERS OF NEW MEXICO

With 2–3 1/2-foot tall, branching stems and showy, yellow-orange flower heads with long drooping rays, this common flower is a late-summer mainstay along mid- to high-elevation trails and meadows. Look for the drooping ray flowers spaced around a yellow disk, and simple, unlobed basal and stem leaves. A plant can have up to 12 flower heads.

FLOWERS: July–September. Flower heads have 14–26 yellow-orange ray flowers, often drooping, each 7/8–1 3/4-inches (21–45 mm) long by 3/16–3/8-inch (4.2–8.5 mm) wide, tips with 3–4 shallow points. Pointed green phyllaries are often visible between the spaced rays. The yellow disk domes up as it matures.

LEAVES: Basal and alternate on stem. Basal blades reach 12-inches long, 3/8–2 inches (1–5 cm) wide, linear to lance-shaped, clasping, rounded or pointed tips, entire margin, prominent white midvein; alternate stem blades similar but smaller upward.

HABITAT: Moist sandy, gravelly, loam soils of mountain meadows, stream banks, roadsides; ponderosa, spruce-fir, pine-aspen forests.

ELEVATION: 7,500–12,000 feet.

RANGE: AZ, CA, CO, ID, MT, NV, NM, OR, UT, WY.

SIMILAR SPECIES: Cutleaf Coneflower, Rudbeckia laciniata, in much the same range and habitat, has long, drooping yellow rays but the leaves have 3–7 deeply cut, pointed lobes and the disk is noticeably elongated into a column.

NM COUNTIES: Nearly statewide in mountain forests in mid- to high-elevation habitats (not recorded in Sandia and Manzano Mts.): Catron, Cibola, Colfax, Grant, Lincoln, Los Alamos, McKinley, Mora, Otero, Rio Arriba, San Juan, San Miguel, Sandoval, Santa Fe, Sierra, Socorro, Taos, Valencia.