Common Name: doll's head

Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Shrub

General: Herbaceous perennials, to 1 m tall, pubescent herbage.

Leaves: Opposite, ovate with acuminate tips, petioled.

Flowers: Heads 1-flowered, small, yellow, the corollas tubular, involucres of the individual heads tubular, gamophyllous, 5-6 toothed, flowers crowded at branch tips in dense glomerules, these subtended by a few herbaceous bracts.

Fruits: Achenes columnar. Pappus a short crown.

Ecology: Found in canyons from 3,000-4,000 ft (914-1219 m); flowering year-round.

Distribution: Arizona; Mexico.

Notes: Look for this species in Arizona in Santa Cruz and Pima counties.

Ethnobotany: Unknown

Etymology: Lagascea is an honorific for Marianio La Gasca y Segura, a 19th century Spanish botanist, while decipiens means deceptive, in some sense not what it appears to be.

Synonyms: Calhounia decipiens, Nocca decipiens

Editor: LCrumbacher2012