The photo at right shows basin rayless daisy as seen from Cottonwood Creek, Trout Creek Mountains...........June
28, 1997.
Basin rayless daisy is a low growing wildflower to 30 cm tall. The stems are several to many, and sparsely leafy to very leafy. The herbage has abundant spreading hairs. The basal leaves are linear-oblanceolate to spatulate. All are long-petioled and up to 8 cm long and 6 mm at widest. The stem leaves are similar, nearly sessile, and reduced in size upwardson the stem.
The heads are solitary or several, discoid, and yellow in color. Pistillate flowers are present (not so with the other rayless Erigerons in our area. The pistillate flowers lack rays, but may have an inconspicuous white or anthocyanic ligule shorter than the disk. The involucre is a4- 6 mm high, spreading-hirsute and occasionally glandular. The disk corollas are 2.8- 4.9 mm long.
Basin rayless daisy is foun mostly in hot, dry places in the deserts and foothills, sometimes being found up to about 7000 feet in the mountains.
Basin rayless daisy is found from southeastern Oregon south to southern California (east of the Cascades and Sierra Nevada) and east through central and southern Idaho through central Utah to northern Arizona.
