Common madia is a strongly-scented, simple to branched annual to 32" tall, very glandular and sticky in the upper part of the stem and villous below.  The leaves are alternate, linear to widely lanceolate, and entire to somewhat toothed.  There are few basal leaves in a small rosette, and the lower cauline leaves are crowded, sessile, and densely villous.  The upper leaves are spaced farther apart, much reduced in size and linear, almost bractlike.  The radiate flowering heads are solitary on long stems, and are both terminal and in the leaf axils.  The involucres are campanulate to hemispheric, and the phyllaries are ± bristly.  The heads are very showy and contain from 8 to 16 yellow ray flowers that sometimes have a maroon blotch at the base, and 25-50+ staminate disk flowers that are yellow to maroon with purple-black anthers and no pappus.  The ray achenes are flattened, black to dark-brown and glabrous.  Common madia is quite abundant on dryish chaparral slopes and grassy meadows from 3000' to 8000', and ranges from San Diego Co. to Oregon, blooming from June to August. The first picture was taken in Rocky Oaks Park in the Santa Monica Mountains, and the other two in the San Bernardino Mts. All the former subspecies of Madia elegans have now been consolidated under this single name.

Click here for Latin name derivations: 1) Madia 2) elegans.
Pronunciation: MAD-ee-a EL-e-gans.
Click here for Botanical Term Meanings.