Yukon wild buckwheat

Plants tight, compact mats, 3-10 dm wide. Aerial flowering stems mostly erect, 0.2-0.8 dm. Leaf blades narrowly elliptic, 1-2(-3.5) × 0.4-1 cm, densely tomentose abaxially, floccose and greenish adaxially. Inflorescences umbellate; branches 0.5-2 cm. Involucres usually turbinate-campanulate, (4-)5-7(-8) mm. Flowers 3-5(-6) mm, including 0.2-0.3 mm stipelike base; perianth bright yellow.

Flowering Jul-Aug. Exposed bluffs, mixed grassland communities, willow thickets; 300-500 m; Yukon; Alaska.

Variety aquilinum is rare and isolated, known only from the Eagle area of extreme east-central Alaska (including the Kathul Mountains, Southeast Fairbanks County) and from the Aishihik Lake area in the Yukon Territory. It is closely related to and marginally distinct from var. flavum, its isolation the result of Pleistocene glaciation.