Serpentine Bristleweed

Hazardia stenolepis is distinguished by its hairy stems, glabrous, relatively small leaves, discoid heads, and long, narrow involucres with stramineous, linear-lanceolate phyllaries.

Shrubs, 30–100 cm. Stems sparsely short-hispidulous. Leaves sessile; blades obovate to oblong, 15–25 × 5–12 mm, coriaceous, bases subclasping, margins coarsely spinulose-dentate or -serrate (with 5–11 pairs of teeth), faces glabrous. Heads in densely spiciform arrays. Involucres cuneate to very narrowly turbinate, 10–17 × 3–6 mm. Phyllaries stiffly erect, almost completely stramineous, linear-lanceolate, faces glabrous except minutely gland-dotted at tips. Ray florets 0. Disc florets 4–8(–10); corollas 7–9 mm. Cypselae 5–8 mm, glabrous. 2n = 10.

Haplopappus squarrosus Hooker & Arnott subsp. stenolepis H. M. Hall, Publ. Carnegie Inst. Wash. 389: 253, fig. 89. 1928

Hazardia stenolepis, the serpentine bristleweed, is a North American species of shrub in the daisy family. It has been found only in California in the western United States, and in Baja California in northwestern Mexico.

Hazardia stenolepis is a shrub up to 100 cm (39 in) tall. The plant produces numerous flower heads in a dense, elongated array at the top of the plant. Each head contains 8-10 disc flowers but no ray flowers. The species sometimes grows on serpentine soils.