This “perky” flower lives up to its common name with numerous leafy, stems reaching 10-inches tall bearing showy flowers. Note the bright yellow rays with three shallow, rounded teeth, stems with leaves, and dense cluster of silvery-hairy basal leaves.

FLOWERS: May–August. Usually one flower head per stem, occasionally more; each head has 8–14 yellow petal-like ray flowers, each 1/2–5/8-inch long (12–17 mm), 3 rounded  teeth; disk yellow; phyllaries beneath the rays equal in length,  and densely hairy.

LEAVES: Dense basal cluster; stem leaves alternate, smaller. Blades spatula-shaped and round-tipped to lance-shaped or linear, to 2-inches long (5 cm) by 3/8-inch wide (5 mm) at mid-stem, smaller up the stem; surfaces densely silvery-hairy, margins entire.  Leaves have one vein.

HABITAT: Sandy, gravelly soils, roadsides, disturbed areas; pinyon-juniper, ponderosa-Douglas fir.

ELEVATION: 5,300–9,200 feet.

RANGE: AZ, NM.

SIMILAR SPECIES: Ives’ Four-nerve Daisy, T. ivesiana, in pinyon-juniper woodlands, has green stem leaves with few to no hairs. Alpine Stemless Daisy, T. acaulis, has no stem leaves.

NM COUNTIES: Western 1/2 NM in mid- to high-elevation habitats: Bernalillo, Catron, Cibola, Dona Ana, Eddy, Grant, Los Alamos, McKinley, Rio Arriba, San Miguel Sandoval, Santa Fe, Sierra, Socorro, Taos, Torrance, Valencia.