five 7–13 mm long elliptical petals mostly to entirely hidden under the sepals. They are most often a light yellow to cream, but sometimes have a blush of pink or purple; they have purple veins. When pollination is completed, the flower heads turn upright and the sepals begin to open. The petals may be visible at this stage. The many styles grow longer, eventually becoming 15–70 mm in length. The styles are densely covered in fine hairs making them resemble downy bird feathers or wisps of mauve smoke. The seed heads start out pale pink and fade to tan or grey as the seeds mature in mid-summer. The seeds do not appear to need cold stratification, as germination did not change significantly when tested. Taxonomy Geum triflorum was named and described by German–American botanist Frederick Traugott Pursh in his book Flora americae septentrionalis using an 1811 collection by naturalist John Bradbury. He placed the species within Carl Linnaeus's Geum, a genus with a name derived from Greek for "taste", with the species name of Geum triflorum for the three flowers usually present on each flower stalk. The species previously had been collected in Idaho on 12 June 1806 by American explorer Meriwether Lewis but was not described by him. That specimen was incorrectly described as a new species named Geum ciliatum by Pursh. German botanist Kurt Sprengel placed it in Sieversia as S. triflora in his update of Systema Vegetabilium published in 1825. This classification was eventually rejected as was the 1906 attempt by American botanist Edward Lee Greene to create a new genus that would reclassify G. triflorum as Erythrocoma triflora and separate out a dozen regional varieties as separate species. Varieties and forms G. triflorum has three varieties that are accepted by many, but not all, authorities, . Geum triflorum var. campanulatum (Greene) C.L.Hitchc. Geum triflorum var. canescens (Greene) Kartesz & Gandhi Geum triflorum var. ciliatum (Pursh) Fassett Geum triflorum var. campanulatum was described as a separate species, Erythrocoma campanulata, by Greene and as Geum campanulatum by English-born botanist George Neville Jones, but American botanist Charles Leo Hitchcock argued for its classification as a variety of G. triflorum in 1961, writing, "There has been much diversity of opinion regarding both the generic status of, and significance of the variation in, this complex. In general the several taxa that have been recognized at the specific level are largely sympatric