Arctic butterbur, also called sweet coltsfoot, is an early bloomer of wet roadsides, ditches and streambanks. Its stout, white-woolly flower stalks push up in early spring, often before the big leaves unfold, topped by crowded clusters of whitish to pinkish flower heads.
Male and female flowers usually grow on separate plants. Male heads are whitish and produce pollen, while female heads set small seeds topped with white bristles. Bees, flies, beetles and wasps visit the flowers.
Once flowering is finished the leaves take over. They rise on long stalks from a creeping underground stem, can grow more than a foot across, and are green above and white-woolly underneath. Patches can cover a wet slope, seep or roadside ditch. Botanists divide the species into several varieties that differ in leaf shape and elevation. The lowland and mountain form has leaves cut like a hand, often more than halfway to the stalk, while high-elevation forms have shallower lobes.
It is a sun lover that does best on wet, rich soil, including bare ground at roadsides and landslides, and it ranges from low elevations into the alpine. The species grows all around the Northern Hemisphere. Look for the flower stalks in early spring and the large leaves through summer wherever the ground stays soaked.
How to identify it
White-woolly flower stalks 4 to 20 inches tall, with small scale-like bracts instead of real leaves, topped by a dense cluster of whitish to pinkish flower heads, often before the leaves are up. Basal leaves are large, up to about 16 inches across, on long stalks, lobed and coarsely toothed, green above and white-woolly beneath.
Habitat
Wet ground: streambanks, ditches, wet roadsides, meadows, swamps and seeps, often on bare mineral soil, from low elevations up to the alpine zone. It favors open sun and open-canopy forest over deep shade.
Photos
Sightings in the forest
363 research-grade sightings in Mt. Hood National Forest on iNaturalist, most recently on October 16, 2026. See them on iNaturalist →