rosy pussytoes, Antennaria rosea

Pussytoes are amazing! They most often reproduce vegetatively, by sending out creeping stems that root, and start new plants. They can form large, attractive, pale leaved colonies that way. Less often, the female flowers develop seeds without being fertilized. Each of the rosy bracted structures is a flower head that can contain more than a hundred individual female flowers. There could be a couple thousand flowers in this image. Least often, those flowers develop seeds after being fertilized. The male flowers grow on separate plants in separate colonies. Except that with some species, including rosy here, no male plants have ever been found. So it seems that rosy has given up on that last strategy altogether. Rosy pussytoes are probably the most wide spread species, growing in AK, AZ, CA, CO, IA(L), ID, MI(T), MN, MT, ND, NE, NM, NV, OR, UT, WA, WY, AB, BC, LB, MB, NF, NY, NU, ON, QC, SK, YT, and GL. Summit Co CO, 6/17/13. Aster family, Asteraceae.