Plants 22-75 cm. Stems erect (stout, branched), glabrate. Leaves: basal and proximalmost cauline withering by flowering; cauline sessile; blades linear, 10-80 × 1-10 mm, margins entire, apices acuminate, faces glabrate. Heads 2-4 per branch, in broadly corymbiform arrays. Peduncle bracts broadly lanceolate to narrowly ovate, glabrate. Involucres 4-6 mm. Phyllaries in 3-4 series, outer 2-4 mm, mid 3-4 mm, glabrate. Ray florets 2-6; tubes 2-4 mm, laminae 4-11 mm. Disc florets 5-15; corollas 2-4 mm, lobes 1-2 mm. Ovaries obconic, 0.8-1.3 mm, densely strigose; pappi: inner series 3-6 mm. 2n = 18.

Flowering mid summer-early fall. Dry to moist sandy, clay, and gravelly soils of open deciduous and pine woods , oak and pine barrens, roadsides, fields; 0-900 m; Ala., Conn., Del., D.C., Ga., Ind., Ky., La., Md., Mass., Miss., N.H., N.J., N.Y., N.C., Ohio, Pa., R.I., S.C., Tenn., Va., W.Va.

Rare in barren, upland woods in a few counties shown on the map. The records from Kosciusko and Vigo Counties, no doubt, should be referred to some other species.

Essentially glabrous, 2-6 dm from a short stout caudex; lvs entire, linear or narrowly oblong (or the lower oblong-oblanceolate), 2-8 cm נ2-12 mm, more than 5 times as long as wide, sessile, or the lower petiolate (but only slightly if at all larger than the others); infl flat-topped, the heads tending to be in small glomerules; invol cylindric, 4-7 mm, its bracts well imbricate, broad and firm, the outer shortly green-tipped, the inner chartaceous and erose- margined; rays 3-6, white, 5-10 mm; disk-fls 5-10, 4-5.5 mm (dry), white or ochroleucous; achenes ±densely sericeous; pappus white, some of the bristles obscurely clavellate above; 2n=18. Dry woods and open ground; Mass. to Ga., w. to W.Va., s. Ind., w. Ky., and La. (Sericocarpus linifolius)

Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.

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