Solidago missouriensis

Native

July to August

Yellow ray flowers, yellow disk flowers

12″ to 32″

This is a 12″ to 32″ tall, erect, perennial forb rising on 1 to 50 or more sterile and fertile shoots from a creeping rhizome and, sometimes, from a caudex. It is colonial and forms large, dense patches. In a dense colony the inner shoots will be sterile, only the outer shoots producing flowers.

The stem is erect, hairless and unbranched below the inflorescence. It is sometimes sparsely hairy in the inflorescence. It is not shiny and not covered with a whitish, waxy bloom (glaucous).

The leaves are alternate, somewhat thickened, and stiff. A tight bundle of small, wing-like leaves often appears in the leaf axils. Lower stem leaves are on winged leaf stalks up to 2″ long. They are inversely lance-shaped to linear lance-shaped, 2⅜″ to 5⅞″ long, and 3 ⁄16″ to 13 ⁄16″ wide but usually ⅜″ to ¾″ wide, mostly 7 to 10 times as long as wide. They taper at the base to the leaf stalk and taper at the tip to a sharp point. They usually have 3 conspicuous parallel veins noticeable at least on the undersurface. The upper and lower surfaces are hairless. The margins are untoothed or toothed with sharp, forward-pointing teeth. Middle and upper stem leaves are stalkless or almost stalkless, lance-shaped to linear, 1½″ to 2⅜″ long, and ⅛″ to 9 ⁄16″ wide, becoming rapidly smaller as they ascend the stem. All but the uppermost leaves have 3 conspicuous parallel veins.

The inflorescence is a wider than tall, pyramidal or diamond-shaped, branched cluster at the end of the stem with 10 to 210 flower heads. It can be ½″ to 8″ long but is usually 1⅛″ to 4¾″ long and 1⅛″ to 4¾″ wide. The branches are strongly bent backward. The flower heads are arranged mostly on one side of the branch.

The flower heads have 5 to 14 yellow ray florets and 6 to 20, usually at least 8, yellow disk florets.

Canada goldenrod (Solidago canadensis var. canadensis) is a taller plant, up to 7′ tall. The stem is hairy above the middle. Lower stem leaves are stalkless. The leaves are thin, not stiff. They become only slightly smaller or are the same size toward the top of the stem. The lower leaf surface usually has hairs along the midrib and main veins. The flower heads have only 3 to 6 disk florets.