Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Forb/Herb

General: Herbaceous perennials to biennials, stems ascending or erect, herbage with coarse, appressed to spreading hairs, plants with a woody caudex, this generally branching in age, plants arising from taproots.

Leaves: Alternate, oblanceolate to narrowly elliptic, basal blades generally smaller than cauline and often withering at flowering.

Flowers: Generally white with blue or yellow to white centers (appendages), lobes appendaged near base, corollas rotate-salverform, 5-10 mm wide, with 4-10 petal-like lobes and 5 appendages at flower throats, calyxes with 5 deep lobes, sepals 4-10, fused at the bases or free, stamens alternate, epipetalous, ovaries superior, entire to 4-lobed, styles 1-2, entire or 2-lobed or -branched, inflorescences with subtending bracts, generally terminal and axillary, flowers borne in coiled cymes in groups of 3 or more, pedicels recurved to reflexed and elongated in fruit.

Fruits: Nutlets 1-4, erect, fused, surfaces smooth to roughened, prickly or bristly or not, larger than the style, with a lateral-medial attachment scar, generally with barb-tipped prickles abaxially and on margins.

Ecology: Found on moist soils, in shaded areas in the oak and pine belts, from 5,000-8,000 ft (1524-2438 m); flowering May-September.

Distribution: Arizona, New Mexico; Mexico.

Notes: The nutlets with basally fused prickles on the margin, lower elevation species. Jepson used for genus information only. The keys for this species according to Kearney and Peebles are the white corollas (sometimes with blue centers) and the fused nutlets.

Ethnobotany: Specific uses for this species are unknown, but other species in the genus have uses and some are poisonous.

Synonyms: None

Editor: LCrumbacher2012