Boott's Cut-leaf Goldenrod
Solidago boottii Hooker is a west of the Mississippi R. species in S. arguta complex with infrequent populations occurring further east. It is characterized by having few to many hairs on the abaxial mid vein of lower and mid stem leaves, particularly in the mid portion of the blade. It has hairy fruit like S. vaseyi. It was treated as S. arguta var. boottii (Hooker) E.J. Palmer & Steyermar in FNA (Semple & Cook 2006 FNA), but recently Semple and Beck (2021) recognized it at the species level. Morton (1973) treated it as a separate species. Solidago boottii was included in a multivariate study of S. sect. Argutae (Semple et al. 2021) and was found to be more similar to S. vaseyi than S. arguta. It is diploid 2n=18 with counts reported for Missouri, Arkansas, and Alabama and a tetraploid from Arkansas. Semple and Morton (2024) presented a map of the cytogeography of S. boottii.
Last revised 19 May 2025 by J.C. Semple
© 2025 J.C. Semple, including all photographs unless otherwise indicated.
1-4. Solidago boottii. 1. Habit, Demaree 60964 MO, Arkansas. 2. Lower stem leaf, Demaree 60964 MO. 3. Hairs on vein of abaxial leaf surface, Demaree 59370 MO. 4. Fruit body, Bush 15246 MO.
Morton, G.H. 1973. The taxonomy of the Solidago arguta - boottii complex. Ph.D. thesis, University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Semple, J.C. and J.B. Beck. 2021. A revised infrageneric classification of Solidago (Asteraceae: Astereae). Phytoneuron 2021-10. 1-6.
Semple, J.C., K. Nizamani, K. Kornobis, G. Samra, L. Tong and T. Stavroullakis. 2021. A multivariate study of Solidago sect. Argutae (Asteraceae: Astereae). Phytoneuron 2021-20: 1–56.
Semple, J.C. and G.H. Morton. 2024. Cytogeography of Solidago sect. Argutae (Asteraceae: Astereae). Phytoneuron 2024-13: 1–13.