Also called Beggarticks or Beggar-ticks. In Utah, this species is rather uncommon and is restricted to mainly the northern portion of the state along the Wasatch Front in Box Elder, Cache, Millard, Morgan, Salt Lake, Utah and Weber counties, this species has been treated in our floras as Bidens comosa (A. Gray), Wiegand (syn. B. connata var. comosa). It grows in mainly moist meadows and the edges of wetlands at low elevations (for example, in Utah County near the shore of Utah Lake). In Salt Lake County, there are few places that are known where it still remains.While the name Bidens comosa was synonymized in the Vol. 21 of Flora of North America (FNA) published in 2006, under Bidens tripartita, there appear to be enough questions about that treatment to leave this for now as B. comosa.The FNA treatment includes B. comosa as synonym without explanation. It recognizes B. connata on the one the hand with various varietal synonyms provided, but never mentions B. connata var. comosa; perhaps just an oversight, but a glaring one. It then also states that it B. connata perhaps should be included in B. tripartita.It seems to miss some key characters that were described by Intermountain Flora Vol. 5 (1994) and well-illustrated there. For example, note the four (and sometimes five) lobed disk flowers as pictured above. Flowering heads are erect and not nodding later on.And, as reported in both Intermountain Flora Vol. 5 (1994) IF and A Utah Flora (4th ed. 2008), B. comosa is reported as 2n=24. But yet FNA says 2n=48 for B. tripartita (and same for B. connata). That raises even more questions. Our plants also do not look like many examples of plants referred to as B. tripartita. Our plants definitely don't have triparte leaves (they may in some cases start to show that but never seem to fully develop past some vestigial remnant it seems). They seem to mostly be <= 6 dm (about two feet) tall although IF provides a much larger range. Also, the calyculi in many examples of B tripartita have a whorled/angled appearance that ours do not. And they have leaf hairs that ours lack, and more prominent teeth. FNA simply says sometimes they are ciliate, but many "tripartita" plants seem to often have long terminal leaf hairs.More study and DNA/genetic analysis is needed before this is lumped with something else.July 14, 2012, Salt Lake Valley east of the Jordan River, Salt Lake County, Utah, approx. 4,295 ft. elev.The leaves of another Bidens, B. frondosa can be seen here in the upper righthand corner.