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Gray or Gray-stemmed Goldenrod

Solidago nemoralis Ait. is native to prairies and open, disturbed soils of fields, roadsides, and gravelly embankments of the Great Plains and eastern U.S. and adjacent Canada.  The species is distinguished from others in subsect. Nemorales by having short-branched caudices and is the only one with secund to apically recurved inflorescences ().Ìý

Two races are recognized following FNA and a multivariate study by Semple et al. (1990), ssp. decemflora and ssp. nemoralis, but following the results of the polygenomic phylogeny of Solidago (Semple & Beck 2021; Semple et al. 2023) the two subspecies were accepted as two species.

Solidago nemoralis was the most distinct species in subsect. Nemorales in the old sense based on the results of a multivariate analysis of all species in the subsection at the time (Semple et al. 2018).

The cytogeography of the species was investigated by Brammall & Semple (1990); the species includes diploids (2n=18) and tetraploids (2n=36).

Brammall, R.A., and J.C. Semple. 1990. The cytotaxonomy of Solidago nemoralis (Compositae: Astereae). Can. J. Bot. 68: 2065-2069.

Semple, J.C., J.G. Chmielewski, and R.A. Brammall. 1990. A multivariate morphometric study of Solidago nemoralis (Compositae: Astereae) and comparison with S. californica and S. sparsiflora. Can. J. Bot. 68: 2070-2082.

Semple, J.C., K. Kornobis, and S. Bzovsky.  2018.  A multivariate morphometric analysis of Solidago subsect. Nemorales (Asteraceae: Astereae).Ìý Phytoneuron 2018-42: 1–40.

Semple, J.C., H. McMinn-Sauder, M. Stover, A.Lemmon, E. Lemmon, and J.B. Beck. 2023. Goldenrod herbariomics: Hybrid-sequence capture reveals the phylogeny of diploid Solidago. Amer. J. Bot. 110(7): e16164. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajb2.16164

Last revised 16 April 2025 by J.C. Semple

© 2025 J.C. Semple, including all photographs unless otherwise indicated