Montane, subalpine, alpine.  Meadows, openings, rocks, tundra.  Summer.
Colorado Trail above Rico, July 31, 2007.

Townsendia rothrockii is a Colorado endemic found in about thirteen Colorado counties.  Almost all plants have been found on United States Forest Service lands and the USFS is studying ways to protect this rare plant. (Click for details.)

As the photograph shows, T. rothrockii leaves are long, narrow, and thickened; and ray flowers are blue/pink/white, short, and, in typical Townsendia fashion, the flower head is very large in relation to the rest of the plant.  In a six hundred square foot area, there were about a dozen plants in flower and there were at least thirty more basal rosettes of leaves.

Joseph Rothrock collected the first specimen of this plant in South Park in 1873 and Asa Gray named the plant in 1880.  (More biographical information.)