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Asteraceae family

Nodding Arnica Arnica lessingii

Native

Nodding Arnica is a perennial wildflower native to Alaska and Canada. It grows to 0.7 ft.

More about this plant

Arnica lessingii is a Russian and North American species of arnica in the sunflower family. The common name is nodding arnica. It is found on both sides of the Bering Strait, being native to Alaska, Yukon, British Columbia, Northwest Territories, and the Kamchatka Peninsula of the Pacific Coast of Russia. Wikipedia →

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY

Size & form

Sources · Size & form

TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Height · Foliage

USDA PLANTS — Lifespan

Height: 0.7 ft
Lifespan: Perennial
Foliage: Broadleaf

In the garden

Ground-cover layer — Sits in the ground-cover of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →

Living mulch / groundcover — Low, ground-hugging grower — can carpet bare soil as a living mulch, shading out weeds and holding moisture.Open guide →

derived roles

Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →

❧ Caterpillar hosts Documented caterpillar host

Recorded feeding on Arnica in North America, including:

Agonopterix arnicella · concealer moth Bucculatrix arnicella · ribbed cocoon-maker moth Caloreas augustella

Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).

✦ Bees 1 bee visitor

1 native & managed bee species is documented visiting Nodding Arnica :

Bombus sylvicola · Forest Bumble Bee

Visitor records (observations, not exhaustive) from Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI →

Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.

How we know this (1) Methods & honest limits

Climate niche (heat tolerance & native rainfall) Derived

We take the plant’s U.S. county range and look up each county’s long-term climate, then summarise: native rainfall = the median annual rainfall across its counties; heat tolerance = the warm end (90th percentile) of average temperature across its range (mirroring how our cold-hardiness floor uses an extreme). Counties + medians blunt the roadside/observer bias that makes point-level climate unreliable. Needs at least five placeable counties.

Honest limits: A realized, sampling-biased niche (where it has been recorded, not its physiological optimum), and county climate is coarse — large Western counties span deserts and mountains. Derived guide, never a measured fact.

Realized-niche / climate-envelope approach (Pearson & Dawson 2003; Soberón 2007). Climate: NOAA NCEI nClimDiv county normals (1991–2020).

Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →

Sources for this entry (18) Open & cited

[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)

[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)

[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)

[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)

[05] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status

[06] Photos — iNaturalist — CC, credited per image

[07] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)

[08] Ecological value — GloBI

[09] Conservation rank — NatureServe Explorer (CC BY)

[10] Foliage — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)

[11] Height — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)

[12] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)

[13] Climate niche — Derived — realized climate niche from U.S. county occurrences (GBIF) × NOAA NCEI county climate normals 1991–2020 (public domain)

[14] Chromosomes — ChromoDB — IAPT/IOPB chromosome data series (Zenodo, CC BY 4.0)

[15] Bee visitors — Noori et al. 2026 (Zenodo, CC BY 4.0) · via GloBI

[16] Flower-visitor value (derived) — Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI

[17] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)

[18] County range — GBIF Open Data — open-licensed occurrences (CC0/CC-BY) → county

Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.

Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

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Ecological value open data

2 / 5 Keystone

Keystone (host) value — caterpillar, specialist-bee & monarch hosting. A low number means “not a keystone host,” not “low value”: generalist flower-visitor value is shown separately below and in Bees & wildlife.

Caterpillar host 2

Flower-visitor value derived 1

Recorded flower-visitor breadth — observations, not a nectar measurement. open data

Deep dive

Caterpillar host · 2/5 — native butterfly & moth caterpillars that feed on this genus — the base of the food web (more caterpillars → more songbirds). Genus-level keystone count from Warren II 2026 (CC0; Tallamy host-use records), gap-filled by our GloBI derivation.

Counts are genus-level and banded 0–5. Full rubric →

Host / keystone value from open interaction data. How this is scored →

📍 In your area live

Native to the U.S.

Recorded in 1 state.

Open occurrence records place it in 17 counties across 1 states · GBIF (CC0/CC-BY)

Native — Alaska and Canada

Recorded in 1 states/territories

Conservation

Conservation status G5 — Secure

Invasive? No

What do these ranks mean?

NatureServe ranks risk 1–5 (1 = rarest), globally (G) and per-state (S). A species can be secure worldwide yet at risk in your state. NatureServe →

Toxicity & pet safety

Check the ASPCA pet database →

Educational, not veterinary advice. If you suspect your pet ate this plant, contact a vet or pet poison-control line.

Functional traits TRY · Dryad

Seed mass tiny

0.96 mg

dust-fine seed — surface-sow; needs careful propagation

Heat tolerance cool-climate

Prefers cool summers

recorded mostly in cool-summer regions — may struggle in prolonged heat

Native rainfall moderate

Moderate (~35 in/yr)

a middle-of-the-road rainfall climate

Chromosomes cytotype variation

2n = 38, 76

several cytotypes on record (2n = 38, 76) — a polyploid complex; ploidy varies between populations, which often tracks with adaptability and spread

Deep dive — what these mean

Seed mass 1 mg — average weight of one seed. Bigger seeds are easier to hand-collect & direct-sow; dust-fine seeds need surface-sowing.

Climate niche — the rainfall & warmth of where it actually grows in the U.S., from its county range. A realized niche (where it’s recorded, not its ideal), so read it as a guide. ~35 in/yr rainfall · warm-end avg 38°F across 17 counties (GBIF × NOAA 1991–2020 normals)

Measured traits from TRY + Werner et al. (N-fix), Fan et al. (roots) & FungalRoot — general guidance, not species-specific prescriptions.

More modules coming

Nodding Arnica Arnica lessingii

Growing & care

Wildlife & pollinators

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