Chaenactis douglasii


Chaenactis douglasii is a North American species of flowering plant in the daisy family known by the common name Douglas' dustymaiden.

Description

Chaenactis douglasii is a variable herb, generally a perennial. It grows erect to, with one to many stems coated in cobwebby hairs. The woolly or hairy leaves may be up to long and are divided intricately into many lobes with curled or twisted tips. Stem leaves become smaller and stalkless upwards.
The inflorescence produces one or more flower heads, each up to about long. The discoid flower head is lined with flat, glandular, blunt-pointed phyllaries and contains 50–70 white or pinkish tubular disc flowers with protruding anthers.
The fruit is an achene about long including its pappus of scales.
;VarietiesChaenactis douglasii var. alpina A.Gray Chaenactis douglasii var. ''douglasii''

Distribution and habitat

The plant is found in western Canada and the western United States from British Columbia to Saskatchewan, and south to California to New Mexico, with a few isolated populations in Nebraska and the Dakotas. It grows in a wide variety of habitats, including harsh environments such as rock fields in alpine climates in the Sierra Nevada, east of the crest of the Cascade Range of Washington and Oregon, scrubland and desert, and disturbed areas such as roadsides. Distributed over a wide range of elevations, from sea level to, it is found most often between.

Uses

Some Plateau Indian tribes used this plant as a dressing for burns, wounds, and sores.