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 |
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