Pygmy pussytoes

Antennaria alpina (Linnaeus) Gaertner var. monocephala (de Candolle) Torrey & A. Gray

Dioecious or gynoecious (stamin-ates uncommon or in equal frequen-cies as pistillates, respectively). Plants 5–13 cm (stems usually stipitate-glandular). Stolons 2–4 cm. Basal leaves 1-nerved, spatulate to narrowly spatulate or oblanceolate, 9–18 × 2–4 mm, tips mucronate, abaxial faces tomentose, adaxial glabrous or green-glabrescent, or both gray-pubescent. Cauline leaves linear, 4–11 mm, flagged. Heads usually borne singly (rarely 2–3). Involucres: staminate 5–7 mm; pistillate 5–8 mm. Phyllaries distally brown, dark brown, black, or olivaceous. Corollas: staminate 2.5–3.5 mm; pistillate 3.5–4 mm. Cypselae 1–1.3 mm, usually glabrous; pappi: staminate 3–4 mm (none in gynoecious populations); pistillate 4–5 mm. 2n = 28, 56, 60?, 70.

Subspecies 2 (2 in the flora): n North America, Russian Far East (Chukotka Peninsula).

It seems reasonable to follow in part E. Hultén’s (1968) broad concept of Antennaria monocephala (R. J. Bayer 1991). Hultén circumscribed it as containing three subspecies. The sexual phase of A. monocephala (i.e., subsp. monocephala and subsp. philonipha) is known from southern Alaska, south of the Brooks Range, and to Yukon Territory and adjacent areas of the Northwest Territories and across the Bering Strait on the Chukotka Peninsula. Within his concept of A. monocephala, Hultén also circumscribed the presumably autopolyploid apomictic form of the species as A. monocephala subsp. angustata, thereby extending the range of the species across the Canadian arctic into Greenland and down the western Cordillera into Montana and Wyoming.

Antennaria monocephala subsp. monocephala is an amphimictic progenitor of the A. alpina agamic complex, as well as the sexual progenitor of the apomicts of subsp. angustata.