Description: Slender, spikelike plants up to 5U tall, with abundant grasslike leaves and usually hairy stems. The lowest leaves can be will over 1U long and up to 1/2S wide, with the stem leaves smaller and progresively reduced upward.
The flower heads are in a dense spike at the top of the plant. Each small head is about 1/4S wide, with an overlapping series of bracts that have hairy, outward-curving pointed tips.
There are mostly 5-10 small, 5-lobed, purple disk flowers per head, with 2 prominent threadlike style branches protruding from each floer. Forms of this plant with white flowers occasionally occur among groups of purple-flowered plants.
Midsummer-- early fall.Habitat/Range:Common througout the tallgrass region in seepage areas in upland prairies, moist prairie depressions, and mesic to dry prairies.