Annuals, 10-80 cm; herbage bristly and/or soft-hairy. Leaves petiolate (proximal) or sessile; blades green or gray, lanceolate or ovate to elliptic or oblanceolate, 1-10 cm, bases tapering to wings, margins entire or dentate, apices acute, faces ± canescent. Heads borne singly or in paniculiform arrays. Involucres 7-12 mm. Phyllaries green, narrowly lanceolate to linear (margins shaggy-ciliate), apices acute. Ray florets 10-21; laminae 1-2 cm. Disc corollas 4-5 mm. Cypselae 6-7 mm; pappi 3-4 mm. 2n = 36.

Flowering Oct-May. Sandy desert soils; 0-1300 m; Ariz., Calif., Nev., Utah; Mexico (Baja California, Sonora).

Duration: Annual

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Forb/Herb

General: Slender annual, moderately branched 10-60 cm tall, hirsute canescent and stipitate-glandular throughout, stems and peduncles eventually subglabrate.

Leaves: Alternate on narrowly winged petioles .5-2.5 cm long, upper ones subsessile; leaf blades ovate, obovate, to lance-oblong, .5-4 cm wide, 1-7 cm long, acute at apex, cuneate at base, strongly 3-nerved, dentate above middle, or smaller ones entire.

Flowers: Few heads, solitary to paniculate, to 5 cm in diameter; involucres 8-12 mm, unequal bracts, linear-lanceolate and acute or attenuate, 7-10 mm long, densely ciliate, long white hairs along margin, except at tip; densely glandular on back; rays 10-15, golden yellow, 10-20 mm long, 6-10 mm wide, disc corollas 5-6 mm long.

Fruits: Cypselae 6-7 mm long, narrowly cuneate, silky villous, black with white margins, yellowish crown.

Ecology: Found in sandy or gravelly soils from sea level to 4,500 ft (1372 m) ; flowers October-May.

Ethnobotany: Unknown

Etymology: Geraea is from the Greek geraios for old, while canescens means covered in short gray or white hairs.

Synonyms: Geraea canescens var. canescens

Editor: SBuckley, 2010