The great botanist James Backhouse Junior discovered this hawkweed on the cliffs of Lochnagar in 1850 and later found it on Cairntoul in 1854. F.J. Hanbury also collected this hawkweed on Cairntoul in the Cairngorms in 1885 at probably the same site. Peter Andrews was pleased to find this hawkweed in what was probably Backhouse's & Hanbury's original locality, a deep burn-stream ravine 125 years later. The first time it had been recorded on Cairntoul since Hanbury came here to botanise all those years ago.