Montane, subalpine. Woodlands.  Summer.
Near Dolores-Norwood Road, June 15, 2006.

Hieracium fendleri is uncommon in our area, but the plant easily attracts attention with its long, stiff marginal leaf hairs and bright yellow flowers.  It tends to grow in open, mostly Ponderosa forests on thin rocky soils.  In the photo at left, Hieracium fendleri was growing in the company of Sedum lanceolatum (the early maroon leaves are just showing in front of the rock), Lithospermum multiflorum, and various Antennarias and Erigerons.

Famed Southwest plant collector, Augustus Fendler, collected this plant in the Santa Fe area in 1846.  In 1849 Asa Gray named the plant Crepis ambigua, Schultz and Bipontinus renamed it Hieracium fendleri in 1911, and William Weber renamed it Chlorocrepis fendleri in 1982.  ("Chloro" is Greek for "green" and "crepis" is a name given by Pliny several thousand years ago to a now unknown plant.)  (More biographical information about Fendler.)

Montane, subalpine. Woodlands.  Summer.
Near Dolores-Norwood Road, June 15, 2006.

Montane, subalpine. Woodlands.  Summer.
Near Dolores-Norwood Road, June 15, 2006.
Shearer Creek Trail, May 17, 2006.

The basal leaves have long stiff hairs which persist even into the next year; notice the hairs on the dead dried leaves.  The bottom plant apparently has picked up the color of the pink sandstone soils it grows in, but a close look at the leaves will show chlorophyll beginning to mask this light maroon.