Townseiulia florifer (Hooker) Gray 

 SHOWY TOWNSENDIA 

 Daisy Family (Asteraceae) 



CONSERVATION STATUS 



U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: None. 



Bureau of Land Management: Watch (USDI BLM 1996). 



Montana Natural Heritage Program: ranked G5 SI, demonstrably secure globally, but 

 critically imperiled because of extreme rarity in Montana. 



DESCRIPTION: Showy townsendia is an annual, biennial, or short-lived perennial daisy which 

 grows from a taproot and unbranched crown. It may have one or several flowering stems which 

 are mostly 5-15 cm tall, each bearing one or more flower heads. The persistent tufted basal leaves 

 are oblanceolate to obovate, and about 2-6 cm long and 3-1 1 mm wide and the stem leaves are 

 similar or smaller. The herbage is densely hairy to almost hairless. Flower heads are subtended by 

 an invcolure about 7-10 mm high composed of a few series of imbricate acute bracts. The flower 

 heads consist of a ring of showy light-pink ray flowers which are about 7-12 mm long 

 surrounding numerous tubular disk flowers. The disk flowers have a pappus composed of slender 

 barbed bristlelike scales and the pappus of the ray flowers is similar but somewhat shorter. The 

 fruits are lightly hairy (adapted from Cronquist 1955). Figure 5 is a line drawing of the species, 

 and a close-up photo is shown in Appendix E. 



Townsendia florifer is most similar to T. parryi which is common in southwestern Montana but 

 usually occurs at higher elevations. Both species have simple crowns and leafy flower stems 

 which are tall compared to other Montana species of Townsendia which generally have branched 

 caudices and leaves and flower heads which hug the ground. Townsendia florifer has smaller 

 flower heads than T. parryi and has pink rays rather than lavender, purplish, or blue rays of the 

 latter. It may also be mistaken for species of the other daisy gQntidi Aster and Erigeron. Species 

 ofErigeron differ by having an involucre consisting of a single series of naiTOW bracts all of 

 about the same size. Species of Aster share the imbricate involucre of Townsendia florifer, but 

 mostly have more numerous, smaller flower heads with blueish colored rays. 



GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION 



Global distribution: Western North America, east of the Cascades and west to the Rocky 

 Mountains, from Alberta south to Nevada, west to Utah and Idaho (Hitchcock and 

 Cronquist 1983). It is known historically from Wyoming by pre- 193 5 collection (Fertig 

 1996) and was discovered in Montana in 1985. 



Montana distribution: Townsendia florifer was first collected in the state by Peter 

 Lesica in 1985 from two nearby sites in the Sage Creek area, Beaverhead County, 



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