| Author | Pyne & Stucky | |
| Distribution | Sandhills and the southwestern Coastal Plain, north and northeast only to Johnston, Wayne, and Sampson counties. The Brunswick County record is from Smith Island.
Endemic to the Coastal Plain of NC to north-central SC. | |
| Abundance | Uncommon to common, but can be locally abundant. Despite a rather small global range, its relative commonness in NC suggests a State Rank of S4 and a Global Rank of G4. | |
| Habitat | Xeric to dry Longleaf Pine-Wiregrass woodlands, dry savannas, sandhills, oak scrub, powerlines. | |
| Phenology | Flowering and fruiting late August-October. | |
| Identification | Blazing-stars typically have single unbranched stems, many slender leaves, and a terminal spike-like inflorescence of disk florets only. They grow from very hard, roundish, underground corms. Sandhills Blazing-star grows 1-2.5 feet tall, 1-several stems from a single corm, the stems upright to leaning horizontal, the lower leaves lance-linear and generally without stalks, and with the middle and upper leaves progressively narrower, shorter, and stalkless. The heads are narrow, have only 4-9 pink-purple florets, and occur in a single row (secund) or all around the stem. Liatris secunda looks very similar and has secund heads, but its florets are white to pale pink and its involucral bracts are blunt (vs. sharply acute). Several other pink-purple flowered species occur in the same region, but they tend to have flower heads not secund or have larger heads with more florets. | |
| Taxonomic Comments | In older literature, treated as L. regimontis, a name misapplied.
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| Other Common Name(s) | Coker's Blazing-star, Coker's Gayfeather, Sandhills Gayfeather | |
| State Rank | S3? [S4] | |
| Global Rank | G3 [G4] | |
| State Status | | |
| US Status | | |
| USACE-agcp | | |
| USACE-emp | | |
