Semi-desert. Openings, meadows. Spring, summer.
Corona Arch Trail, Utah, May 20, 2005.

This tiny Dandelion inhabits the drier, sandy, rocky areas of the Four Corners.  The short, lobed, basal leaves are diagnostic even before the flower emerges.  The plant is typically between 2 and 14 inches tall, has one-to-six flower stems from the base, and stems often lean and twist.  Flower heads are composed only of ray flowers.

The Greek "malacos" and "trichos", "soft hairs", refer to the downy hairs of the pappus (hair-like structures at the top of Asteraceae growing seeds).  The flower of Desert Dandelion looks like the flower of Sow Thistle, "Sonchus oleraceus", thus the species name, "sonchoides".

The first specimen of this plant was collected "on the plains of the Platte" River by Thomas Nuttall on his 1834-1837 Western trip with the Wyeth Expedition.  Nuttall named the plant Leptoseris sonchoides in 1841 and it was given its present name by Torrey and Gray in 1843.  (More biographical information.)

Semi-desert. Openings, meadows. Spring, summer.
Corona Arch Trail, Utah, May 20, 2005.