Kingdom: Plantae

Phylum: Magnoliophyta -- flowering plants

Class: Magnoliopsida -- dicots

Order: Asterales

Family: Asteraceae (Compositae) -- sunflower

Common Name: houndstooth hawkweed, houndstongue hawkweed

Species Code: HICY

Origin: Native to dry to mesic open grasslands and open forests of western North America from British Columbia to Oregon and east to Montana and Wyoming.

Rare: no

Form: forb, perennial, erect, densely coarse white pubescent throughout, sometimes also finely stellate, 30-100 cm tall, sap milky. Differs from H. albertinum primarily on being less setose and having an obviously glandular involucre.

Duration: perennial

Habitat Type: prairie

Wetland Indicator Status: not listed

Leaves: short petiolate, elongated, margins entire; lower cauline leaves 10-25 cm long and 1-3 cm wide, crowded; becoming reduced and more distant upward.

Mature height: 12-40 inches

Flowers: few to numerous, involucre 7-12 cm high, with numerous short, black, gland-tipped bristles and often some longer setae; ligulate flowers perfect, yellow; disc flowers lacking.

Flower color: yellow

Bloom: June, July

Bloom starts on: mid June

Bloom ends on: late July

Fruit: achene, 3-3.5 mm long, cylindric, reddish brown; pappus whitish to tawny.

Characteristics:
Reproduces sexually by seed.
Differs from H. albertinum primarily on being less setose and having an obviously glandular involucre. The two species grade into one another and into H. scouleri and all three may be considered a single species in some treatments.
Perennating organ is a caudex.
Flowers are all ligulate and perfect.
Fruit is an achene.
n=9 (University of British Columbia 2003).
Species which reproduce sexually are diploids (2n=18), while species which are apomictic are triploids (2n=27) (Flora of North America Editorial Committee 1993+).
Apomixis is know in the genus.
Seeds are windborne.
A minor value forage of Rocky Mountain elk in spring and summer (Kufeld 1979).

Sun requirement: full sun

Soil moisture: xeric to mesic

Precipitation: 14-30 inches for H. scouleri (USDA NRCS PLANTS Database 2009).

Sowing time: not known, probably best sown in the fall

Transplant time: spring

Stratification: none needed for H. albertinum

Seed yield: medium

Seed harvest: medium difficult

Seed first harvest: second season

Seed cleaning: medium difficulty

Planting duration: long

Seed shatter: high

Seed size: medium

Seed harvest date: July

Seed comments: Plants flower and ripen seed indeterminately. Seeds are windborne and shatter readily.

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

Key words: native perennial upland forb

Propagation:
No information is available, but seed germination is probably similar to H. albertinum.
See 1 protocol in the Native Plant Network for H. albertinum Pullman WA Plant Materials Center
Reproduces sexually by seed.

References:
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/

Kufeld, Roland. 1973. Foods Eaten by the Rocky Mountain Elk. Journal of Range Management 26:106-113.

University of British Columbia. 2003. British Columbia Flora. University of British Columbia Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research. Accessed 9/1/09 online at http://www.bcflora.org/

USDA NRCS. 2009. The PLANTS Database (http://plants.usda.gov, 27 September 2009). National Plant Data Center, Baton Rouge, LA 70874-4490 USA.

Links:

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