Erigeron compositus / cutleaf fleabane

Adjectives: drought tolerant, exposed, native, rocky

Also known as: cutleaf daisy, dwarf mountain fleabane, trifid mountain fleabane

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Of all the plants in the Asteraceae, this is one (of the few?) that is easily identified. It is also a joy to see on lichen covered rock outcrops.

Cutleaf fleabane is a is a low growing, almost mat-like plant that looks just like you might expect for a miniature daisy. It is a perennial and grows from a taproot and/or a branched caudex. And like other “daisies”, the flowers stand above the leaf mat, solitary on their flowering stems. The disk florets are yellow and some flower heads may have only these. The ray florets are white – or lavender or pink – and the whole heads are less than an inch across. The ray “petals” are rather short by comparison to the total diameter. As seen in the gallery, the involucre consists of many hairy sepals with purple tips that form a basket under the corolla.

The leaves are very hairy, sometimes covered with glandular hairs. In the mat, it is difficult to tell one leaf from another, but if you have more than the allotted minute to look, you can tear a few apart from the masses. Then you will see that each is deeply divided one to four times. There is a photo of this in the gallery.

Cutleaf fleabane is found in open, rocky areas, fully exposed. The plants in the gallery were growing in a crack in a rock. All this is consistent with this being an early flowering plant (soon after snowmelt), being drought tolerant and being shade intolerant. Interestingly, however, it is not just drought tolerant; its broader geographic range includes areas with annual rainfall ranging from about 7.5 to 120 inches.

A final note… there is another plant that also goes by the name “cutleaf daisy”. It is E. pinnatisectus. In that case, however, it is purple and blooms in July and August. This isn’t it.