Arctic Daisy

ARCTIC DAISY: Erigeron humilis

This is one of the many flowers that I identified today at the Thompson Pass Trail. I am going to talk more about this flower and go more in to depth with its information.

General: Perennial herb, with a short taproot or short brittle stem base and often some fibrous roots. the stems are single, 3-20 cm tall and they are hairy with greyish or dark hairs.

Leaves: Basal leaves that are broadly lance to spoon-shaped and are commonly hairless or nearly so by flowering time. The stems leaves linear to lance-shaped, reduced, stalkless, leaves with entire margins.

Flowers: Ray flowers that are white to purplish, numerous about 50-150 . Disk flowers yellow, involucres 6-9 mm hihg, the bracts lance oblong, purplish-black or greenish with long multicellular hairs with purplish balck crosswalls, and the heads are solitary.

Fruits: Hairy achenes, pappus hairs white to tan.

Ecology: Tundra, snowbeds, seepage sites, rocky ledges and scree, in moist to wet alpine sites, also sometimes in bogs at lower elevations. Commin in northern southeast Alaska, usually at high elevations, rare on the Queen Charlotte Islands, scattered in the Coast Mountains to southwestern B.C.

Notes: At least 20 species of Erigeron occur within our region.