Common Name: rosary babybonnets

Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Shrub

General: Spreading shrub, up to 10 m, with light gray, somewhat rough bark, unarmed.

Leaves: Pinnate with mostly 5 pairs, usually 8-18 leaflets per leaf, oval to narrowly elliptic, 9-50 mm long, 2-20 mm across, appressed hairy.

Flowers: Inflorescence racemose and sessile with flowers cream and yellow with a banner and keel, sepals reddish and pubescent, the calyx 5-7 mm long rounded at base, tube 3-4 mm long, corolla banner whitish, blade 11-15 mm long, 14-15 mm wide, orbicular with wings 11-15 mm, whitish to yellowish near the tips.

Fruits: Long, thin pod, constricted between the seeds, 2-11 cm long, 5-7 mm wide, stipitate glandular with sinuous margins.

Ecology: Found on wash edges, dry rocky slopes, and canyons, from 2,000-4,000 ft (610-1219 m); flowers March-April.

Distribution: Ranges from southern Arizona south through Sinaloa and Chihuahua and down the west cost of Mexico as far south as Oaxaca.

Notes: Distinguished by the small light gray to tan branches and the small pinnate leaves, but difficult to identify when not in flower. First glance it appears like an Acaciella or the like, but note the lack of spines and when flowering the raceme of cream flowers is not only beautiful, but very distinctive. Distinguished from the Mexican species by the stipitate glands on the flowers and rachis of the flowers, generally found on rocky slopes.

Ethnobotany: Resin of plant was used as a gum to seal jars by the Papago.

Etymology: Coursetia is named for George Louis Marie Dumont de Courset (1746-1824), a French botanist, while glandulosa means bearing glands.

Synonyms: Coursetia microphylla

Editor: LCrumbacher, 2011