Habit: Perennial herb, from thick taproot that may branch in age producing multiple rosettes, stem 0.
Leaf: basal, simple, ovate or lanceolate to narrowly elliptic, nearly entire to deeply pinnately lobed.
Inflorescence: flowers 1 in axils, erect in bud.
Flower: radial, opening at dawn; sepals 4, reflexed separately; petals 4, yellow (or white), unspotted, strongly ultraviolet reflective (non-reflective at base), fading +- purple or +- red; stamens 8, longer ones opposite sepals, anthers attached at base, pollen grains 3-angled except in polyploid taxa (visible with hand lens); ovary chambers 4, stigma hemispheric, generally > anthers and cross-pollinated (or +- = anthers and self-pollinated), sterile projection of ovary persistent with fertile part in fruit, without abscission lines at juncture between hypanthium and fertile part of ovary.
Fruit: cylindric-ovoid, +- angled to nearly cylindric, walls generally thin, distended by seeds, tip gradually attenuate into a slender sterile portion (0.4)1.5--18 cm, occasionally persistent for > 1 year, sessile.
Seed: in 2 rows per chamber, elongate-ovoid, cylindric to oblong-ellipsoid, pitted or coarsely papillate, giving a shaggy appearance.
Species In Genus: 4 species: California to Washington & southwestern Canada, Nevada to Colorado (especially CA-FP).
Etymology: (Leaves similar to
Leontodon taraxacoides)
Note: Incl in
Camissonia in TJM (1993).
Jepson eFlora Author: Warren L. Wagner & Peter C. Hoch, family description, key to genera, treatment of genera by Warren L. Wagner
Reference: Wagner et al. 2007 Syst Bot Monogr 83:1--240
Unabridged Reference: Raven 1969 Contr US Natl Herb 37:161--396Index of California Plant Names (ICPN; linked via the Jepson Online Interchange)Key to Taraxia
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