About Townsendia condensata Parry
Townsendia condensata Parry is a species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae, commonly known as cushion Townsend daisy and cushion townsendia. It is native to North America, with many scattered occurrences across the mountains of the western United States and Alberta, Canada. It is mostly restricted to alpine climates on high mountain peaks, growing in meadows, tundra, and barren, rocky talus. It grows alongside other alpine plants including Eriogonum androsaceum. This is a petite biennial or perennial herb that forms a clumped growth habit just a few centimeters tall, with its foliage growing from a combined caudex and taproot structure. The leaves are 1 to 1.5 centimeters long, rounded, and covered in woolly hairs. The inflorescence is generally a solitary flower head 1 to 3 centimeters wide, with rough-haired, lance-shaped phyllaries. The head holds many yellow disc florets and many white, pinkish, or purplish ray florets, each up to 16 millimeters in length. The fruit is a hairy achene tipped with a deciduous pappus made of bristles. One variety of this species, T. condensata var. anomala, commonly called the North Fork Easter-daisy, is endemic to the Absaroka Mountains of Wyoming, occurring mostly in the drainage of the North Fork of the Shoshone River.
