Plant Species: Antennaria racemosa, raceme pussytoes
Kingdom: Plantae
Phylum: Magnoliophyta -- flowering plants
Class: Magnoliopsida -- dicots
Family: Asteraceae -- sunflower
Genus: Antennaria
Species: racemosa
Variety:
Common Name: raceme pussytoes
Species Code: ANRA
Origin: Native to dry to moist, open to lightly shaded forested areas of North America from British Columbia south to northern California and east to Alberta and Wyoming.
Rare: no
Form: forb; perennial, deciduous, dioecious, 10-60 cm tall, with creeping, leafy stolons; may form mats.
Duration: perennial
Longevity:
Habitat Type: forest
Wetland Indicator Status: not listed
Leaves: Basal leaves, smooth, green upper surface with white, cotton-hairy undersurface, eliptical to ovate, with short petiole, 2-8 cm long; cauline leaves alternate, narrower, linear and sessile, reduced upward.
Mature height: 4-24 inches
Flowers: Inconspicuous, pale greenish to pale brownish heads on slender stalks in an open racemelike inflorescence; pistillate flowers slightly larger than staminate. May-Aug.
Flower color:
Bloom: May, June, into July, August at higher elevations
Bloom starts on: May
Bloom ends on: June
Fruit: Terete or slightly compressed achenes, 1.5-2 mm long, brown, with a pappus of white capillary bristles 5-6 mm long.
Vegetation type:
Characteristics:
Antennaria as a genus is highly variable and many species are at least partially apomictic while others reproduce sexually. Intergradation between species is common and a large number of species have been proposed at one time or another, resulting in a long list of synonyms for many of the species that are now recognized.
Reproduces both sexually by seed and vegetatively by stolons.
Seed does not persist in the soil (Matthews 1993).
2n=28 (Flora of North America Editorial Committee 1993+, Baldwin et al 2004).
2n=28 + 2 to 4 (University of British Columbia 2003).
Apomixis and polyploidy are known in the genus (Chambers 1998), but A. racemosa is "regularly sexual" (Hitchcock et al 1969).
Plants are dioecious. Dioecy ensures xenogamy.
Aneuploidy is known (University of British Columbia 2003).
Seeds are windborne.
Comments:
Sun requirement: full sun to partial shade
Soil moisture: moist
Precipitation:
Fire: Killed by fire, recolonizes from seed (Matthews 1993)
Hazards:
Sowing time: no information available
Transplant time: no information available, spring probably is best
Stratification: no information available
Seed yield: no information available
Seed harvest: no information available
Seed first harvest: no information available
Seed cleaning: no information available
Planting duration:
Seed insect problem:
Seed shatter:
Seed size: small
Seed harvest date: no information available
Seed comments:
Herbaria:
Key words:
Alternate Genus:
Alternate Species:
Alternate Variety:
Remarks:
Propagation:
No information is available for the species. Some other Antennaria spp. require cold moist stratification, but some do not.
Notes:
References:
Baldwin, B.G., S. Boyd, B.J. Ertter, D.J. Keil, R.W. Patterson, T.J. Rosatti, and D.H. Wilken (eds). 2004. Jepson Online Interchange for California Floristics. University and Jepson Herbaria, University of California, Berkeley, CA. Accessed 7/20/09 online at http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/interchange.html
Chambers, Kenton L. 1998. Cherchez les hommes (In Antennaria, boys are a minority). Oregon Flora Newsletter. 4(3) Oregon State University, October 1998. Available online at http://www.oregonflora.org/ofn/v4n3/antennaria.html
Flora of North America Editorial Committee, eds. 1993+. Flora of North America North of Mexico. 7+ vols. New York and Oxford. Oxford University Press. Online at http://www.fna.org/FNA/
Hitchcock, C. Leo, Arthur Cronquist, Marion Ownbey, and J.W. Thompson. 1969. Vascular Plants of the Pacific Northwest. University of Washington Press. Seattle, WA. 5 vol.
Matthews, Robin F. 1993. Antennaria racemosa. In: Fire Effects Information System, [Online]. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fire Sciences Laboratory (Producer). Available: http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/ [2009, July 20].
University of British Columbia. 2003. British Columbia Flora. University of British Columbia Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research. Online at http://www.bcflora.org/ Accessed 1/1/06.