Slender goldenrod

Solidago porteri Small; S. speciosa Nuttall var. erecta (Banks ex Pursh) MacMillan

Plants 30–120 cm; caudices erect, branched, thick. Stems usually single, erect, essentially glabrous basally to hispidulo-puberulent in arrays. Leaves: basal and proximal cauline tapering to long, winged petioles (quickly reduced distally on stems), blades broadly oblanceolate to obovate, 40–150 × 15–50 mm, margins serrate, finely ciliate, apices acute to obtuse, faces glabrous; mid and distal cauline sessile, blades linear-elliptic, 5–50 × 2–10 mm, margins entire, finely ciliate. Heads 15–350 (1–10 per branch), clustered on short divergent lateral branches in elongate and usually narrowly paniculiform arrays, often interrupted proximally, not secund, sometimes with ascending, straight or arching, elongate branches (like main axis). Peduncles 1–3 mm. Involucres narrowly campanulate, 3.5–6.5 mm. Phyllaries in 3–5 series, appressed, strongly unequal, outer ovate, inner broadly oblong, obtuse to rounded, glabrous. Ray florets 5–9; laminae 2.5–3.5 × 0.7–1 mm. Disc florets commonly 6–10; corollas 4 mm, lobes ca. 1 mm. Cypselae (tan) ca. 2.5 mm, glabrous; pappi 3 mm. 2n = 18.

Flowering Aug–Oct. Dry woods, disturbed open soils, road embankments; 0–1000 m; Ala., Conn., Del., Ga., Ind., Ky., Md., Mass., Miss., N.J., N.Y., N.C., Ohio, Pa., S.C., Tenn., Va., W.Va.

Solidago erecta is mostly absent from the coastal plain in the southeastern United States.