Silver Crown Luina

Description:

This species is a perennial herb growing from rhizomes with a fibrous root system in the aster family, Asteraceae. Most leaves are basal, with those on the stem scattered and becoming much reduced in size upwards on the stem. The basal leaves are long-petiolate with wide palmately cleft blades up to 20 cm long and 25 cm wide. The margins are deeply parted with the segments again coarsely toothed or lobed. The leaves are green above and thinly white tomentose below. The flower heads are in arrays or clusters. They contain up to 50 long yellow or orange disc florets and no ray florets. The fruit is a veiny cylindrical cypsela with a long pappus of many barbed, white bristles.

Habitat:

Spotted at the edge of a open pine forest in the Cascade foothills.

Notes:

Silvercrown may be found from the summit and eastern slopes of the Washington Cascades. It may be found just to the south of the Columbia River in Oregon, roughly between The Dalles, OR, Hood River, OR and Mt. Hood. It is also found in the Klamath area and adjacent southern Willamette Valley in southwestern Oregon and hence southward in the California Coast Range to Sonoma County.