Plants 10-70 cm. Leaves basal and cauline; blades 1-nerved, linear to narrowly oblanceolate or lanceolate, 2-8 cm × 2-10 mm, distal cauline smaller, linear, faces bicolor, abaxial gray, silvery sericeous, adaxial green, glabrescent. Heads (20-90) in loose, spiciform (leafy-bracteate, interrupted) arrays (4-35 cm, occupying ¹/3-⁵/6 plant heights, simple or branched at bases, primary axes mostly visible). Involucres campanulo-turbinate, 5-6.5 mm. Phyllaries some or all with conspicuous dark brown spot distal to middle. Cypselae cylindric to fusiform, minutely strigose; pappus bristles basally connate, falling together. 2n = 56.

Flowering Jul-Sep(-Oct). Open woods, boggy woods, rocky slopes, clearings, fields, borders of woods, roadsides, muddy banks, disturbed sites; 10-500 m; St. Pierre and Miquelon; B.C., N.B., Nfld. and Labr. (Nfld.), N.S., Ont., P.E.I., Que.; Maine, Mich., N.H., N.Y., Pa., Vt., Wis.; Europe; Asia (Caucasus, Iran, Siberia).

The circumboreal Omalotheca sylvatica may have been introduced from Eurasia (Frére Marie-Victorin 1995). Omalotheca alpigena (K. Koch) Holub and O. caucasica (Sommier & Levier) S. K. Cherepanov were treated as synonyms of O. sylvatica by A. J. C. Grierson (1975); they have been recognized as distinct species in other treatments.

Erect, simple, thinly woolly perennial 1-6 dm; lvs commonly subglabrate above, linear or narrowly oblanceolate, the larger basal and lower cauline ones 3-8 mm wide, those at the base of the infl 2-3 mm wide; infl narrow, spiciform-thyrsoid, somewhat leafy-bracteate, with 10-many heads; invol scarcely woolly, or woolly only at the base, 5-7 mm, its bract rounded or obtuse, light stramineous or greenish-stramineous toward the base, some or all with a conspicuous dark brown, commonly reverse-V-shaped spot above the middle, the tip paler; pappus- bristles united at base, falling in a ring; achenes sparsely strigose; 2n=56. Open woods and waste places; circumboreal, s. to n. Me., n. N.H., n. N.Y., and n. Wis. July-Sept.

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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