Showy winter annual usually branched from base, with taproot and milky sap; distinguished by its flower heads of only ligulate florets (ray flowers); herbage conspicuously dotted with red, brown or black, stipitate (stalked), glands.
Winter annual; much branched from the base; flowers bright yellow, ray flowers only; leaves finely divided, sprinkled with tack shaped glands above; fruit (achene) separates from pappus (white bristles) at maturity.
Habitat
Found on sandy to gravelly, limestone soils, in washes, on slopes and sand dunes.
Flower Characteristics
Flower heads with bright yellow ligules (strap-shaped ray flowers); involucres (bracts subtending flowers) 1/2 inch long and 1/8 inch wide, minutely bristly, in 2 series, the outer short and wide, the inner narrow, numerous, margins scarious (thin, dry).
Leaf and Stem Characteristics
Leaves in basal rosettes, alternate along the stems; all leaves without stems; blades to 4 inches long, pinnately divided into narrow lobes, lobes opposite, 1/16 inch or less; upper leaves reduced and narrow.
Fruit and Seed Characteristics
Achenes fusiform (tapered at both ends), 5 to 6 ribbed with deep grooves between the ribs, faces not wrinkled; tapering into short beak, expanded at tip into shallow cup with many small teeth. Pappus of white bristles, 1/2 inch long, deciduous in a ring.