Common Name: Mexican cliffrose

Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Tree

General: Evergreen shrub or small tree from 2-6 m tall, open and often scraggly crown; bark reddish-brown or gray and shreddy; twigs with straight spreading hairs, woolly around leaf axils.

Leaves: Alternate, simple, leaf-blades wedge shaped with 3-7 lobes, 6-15 mm long, thick, leathery and dark green above, while being white woolly beneath; glandular dotted, fragrant, and sticky.

Flowers: Solitary and found at the end of side twigs, on pedicels 2-8 mm long, pedicels with stalked glands; five creamy white petals 7-14 mm long, five sepals each 3.7-5 mm long, flowers 2-2.5 cm wide and fragrant.

Fruits: Achenes with persistent styles to 5 cm long, whitish.

Ecology: Found on dry, rocky slopes and hillsides from 3,500-8,000 ft (1067-2438 m); flowers April-September.

Notes: Distinguished from the similar Fallugia paradoxa by the more white style on the end of the achene; the shreddy, reddish-brown bark, and the 3-7 lobed, glandular dotted leaves.

Ethnobotany: Leaves used as medicine, the used as a cold remedy, taken as a laxative, for arthritis, for venereal diseases, as a wash for smallpox and measles, for kidney troubles, the bark was used in cradleboards, made into rope and sleeping mats, diapers, and as tinder.

Etymology: Purshia is named for Frederick Traugott Pursh (1774-1820) a Saxon plant collector, the first person to write about the Lewis and Clark plant collections, while mexicana means of or from Mexico.

Synonyms: Cowania mexicana, C. mexicana var. dubia

Editor: SBuckley, 2010