Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center


Home	About NPWRC	Our Science	Staff	Employment	Contacts	Common Questions	About the Site

Aquatic and Wetland Vascular Plants of the Northern Great Plains

Petasites Mill. -- Sweet coltsfoot

Rhizomatous perennials; principal leaves basal, long-petioled, the blades sagittate or palmate, white-woolly at least on the lower surface; cauline leaves reduced and bractlike, alternate. Heads radiate or discoid, subdioecious, several to many in a racemiform or corymbiform inflorescence; involucral bracts in a single series, sometimes with a few reduced bracts below, broadly linear, herbaceous with scarious margins; receptacle flat, naked; female heads inconspicuously radiate, the florets all or nearly all pistillate, with a filiform corolla, some with whitish ligules; style shallowly 2-lobed, puberulent; male heads discoid, the florets with style and ovary but not developing achenes, their corollas tubular, 5-lobed. Achenes linear, 5- to 10-ribbed; pappus of numerous white capillary bristles, that of the sterile florets reduced.

Lead Characteristic Go To

1 Leaf blades palmately lobed. P. frigidus

1 Leaf blades sagittate, merely toothed and not lobed. P. sagittatus

49. Asteraceae, the Aster Family

13. Petasites Mill. -- Sweet coltsfoot

1. Petasites frigidus (L.) Fries

2. Petasites sagittatus (Pursh) A. Gray

Return to Family -- Asteraceae - The Aster Family
Return to Contents

Accessibility FOIA Privacy Policies and Notices

U.S. Department of the Interior | U.S. Geological Survey
URL: http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/plants/vascplnt/genpetas.htm
Page Contact Information: Webmaster
Page Last Modified: Thursday, 03-Aug-2006 11:46:35 EDT
Sioux Falls, SD [sdww54]

Lead	Characteristic	Go To
1	Leaf blades palmately lobed.	P. frigidus
1	Leaf blades sagittate, merely toothed and not lobed.	P. sagittatus