Coltsfoot

Petasites frigidus

General: Perennial herb, with thick, creeping rhizomes; stems numerous, 10-50 cm tall, either with mostly female or mostly male flowers; flowering stems precede leaves.

Leaves  Basal leaves triangular to heart-shaped, large, with 5-8 broad teeth or deeply loved into 3-5 coarsely tooted segments, green and thinly hairy to hairless above, sparsely to densely white-woolly below, stalked; stem leaves reduced to alternate, reddish bracts.

Flowers  Ray flowers whitish or pink to purplish; disk flowers pink to purplish; involucres 6-12 mm high, the bracts lance-shaped, with hairs at the base; heads several, in elongating flat-topped clusters, on glandular and often white-woolly stalks.

Fruits  Hairless achenes, 5-10 ribbed; pappus hairs numerous, white. 

Ecology  Wet to moist meadows, seepage areas, streambanks, and lake shores: common from subalpine to alpine elevations.

Source: Pojar's Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast, 1994