[Spanish, an uninhabited and utterly inhospitable place]

Robert D. Dorn

Perennials, 10–30+ cm (taprooted). Stems single or clustered, erect. Leaves basal and cauline (smaller distally); alternate; petiolate; blades (leathery) palmately 3-nerved (nerves ± parallel), lanceolate to ovate or obovate, margins entire or ± toothed, faces glabrous. Heads discoid, (25–180) in corymbiform to paniculiform arrays (terminal and in distal leaf axils). Calyculi 0 or bractlets 1–3+. Involucres cylindric, 3–5 mm diam. Phyllaries persistent, (4–)5(–6) in 1–2 series (bright yellow, drying pale, with greenish yellow midribs ± keeled in life), erect, distinct, oblanceolate or lanceolate to lance-linear, equal, margins scarious (apices cucullate, faces glabrous). Receptacles flat (sometimes with central cusp), smooth, epaleate. Ray florets 0. Disc florets (4–)5(–6), bisexual, fertile; corollas yellow, tubes longer than throats, lobes 5, spreading, linear; style branches: stigmatic areas continuous, apices rounded-truncate (micro-characters tussilaginoid). Cypselae (brown) ellipsoid to oblanceoloid, slightly flattened, usually 10-ribbed, often short-hairy; pappi tardily falling, of 70+, whitish, barbellulate bristles.

Species 1: Wyoming.

Lower Taxon

• Yermo xanthocephalus Dorn