Kingdom: Plantae

Phylum: Magnoliophyta -- flowering plants

Class: Magnoliopsida -- dicotyledons

Order: Asterales

Family: Asteraceae (Compositae) -- sunflower

Common Name: long-leaved fleabane, longleaf fleabane, foothill daisy

Species Code: ERCO5

Origin: Native to dry, open places from shrub-steppe to open forests from British Columbia south to Oregon and east to Montana and Wyoming.

Rare: no

Form: forb, perennial from a caudex and taproot; 10-50 cm. tall, erect to sub-erect, generally purplish at the base, the herbage densely covered with short, spreading hairs.

Duration: perennial

Habitat Type: prairie

Wetland Indicator Status: not listed

Leaves: basal leaves three-nerved, petiolate, linear-lanceolate, acute, tapering to the petiole, entire, 2-25 cm long including the petiole; cauline leaves reduced, becoming sessile upward.

Mature height: 4-20 inches

Flowers: heads 1-16 in an open inflorescence; involucres 5-7 mm. high, grey-hairy, bracts somewhat imbricate; ray flowers 35-65, pistillate, deep blue or occasionally pink or white, 8-14 mm long; disc flowers perfect, 3-5 mm long.

Flower color: blue, purple

Bloom: June, July

Bloom starts on: late June

Bloom ends on: mid July

Fruit: achene, 2-2.5 mm long, pubescent, linear-lanceolate, flattened, brown; pappus double, the outer row of bristles or scales, the inner of 20-30 bristles.

Characteristics:
Reproduces sexually by seed.
Taprooted.
Perennating organ is a caudex.
Stem bases are purple and the leaves are long and pointed, unlike other members of the genus.
In general, Aster tends to be more erect with few, leafy stems and less than 25 ray flowers, blooming in late summer and fall. Erigeron tends to be more compact with most of the leaves low on the stem or even all basal, flowers have more than 25 narrow rays, blooming in spring and summer. The involucral bracts of Erigeron also tend to be of roughly equal length and not imbricate as in the genus Aster. There are, of course, exceptions to all this.
Apomixis is known in the genus.
Disc flowers are perfect, ray flowers are pistillate.
Fruit is a achene.
Seeds are windborne.

Sun requirement: full

Soil moisture: mesic

Sowing time: no information available

Transplant time: spring?

Stratification: no information available

Seed yield: medium

Seed harvest: medium difficulty

Seed first harvest: no information available

Seed cleaning: difficult

Planting duration: no information available

Seed insect problem: no information available

Seed shatter: high

Seed size: small

Seed harvest date: no information available

Seed comments: Seed is windborne and must be collected before dispersal.

Herbaria: Specimen data and digital resources from The Consortium of Pacific Northwest Herbaria

Key words: native upland forb

Propagation:
There is no information for the species.

Notes: Erigeron corymbosus blooms in early July. Don’t know much about it at present. Erigeron sp. seem less aggressive than asters. Common names include long-leaved fleabane, foothill daisy (Skinner et al 2005).

References:
Skinner, David M., Paul Warnick, Bill French, and Mary Fauci. 2005. More Palouse Forbs for Landscaping. USDA NRCS Pullman Plant Materials Center and Palouse Prairie Foundation. Online at http://www.wsu.edu/pmc_nrcs/Docs/More_Forbs_for_Landscaping.pdf

Links:
Plant Profile from the USDA PLANTS Database
Species description from Flora of North America
Species information from the University of Washington Herbarium