Duration: Annual

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Forb/Herb

General: Small annual with stems several, erect or ascending, unbranched from base 15-50 cm tall; covered in translucent glandular hairs .1 mm, sparse to moderately dense, appressed; strigose new growth to glabrate older stems.

Leaves: Thick, chiefly basal, simple and irregularly dentate to deeply pinnatifid; drying dark green or dark bluish green, .6-3 cm wide, 2-8 cm long; basal leaves often withering by time of flowering and fruiting.

Flowers: Raceme to 25 cm long, only a few flowers open at a time, vespertine; sepals with caudate or apiculate tips project from end of sepal, or tips absent; petals white, pink with age, drying pale purple, obovate to nearly orbicular.

Fruits: Capsule clavate over 2 mm in diameter, 12-30 mm long, curved, ascending; on pedicel 8-25 mm long.

Ecology: Found in washes and open desert, especially in sandy soils below 3,500 ft (1067 m); flowers March-June.

Notes: Type specimen collected near Casa Grande.

Ethnobotany: Leaves were used as greens.

Etymology: Camissonia is named for Ludolf Karl Adelbert von Chamisso (1781-1838), a German botanist, while claviformis is from Latin for club-shaped, a reference to the capsules.

Synonyms: Oenothera claviformis subsp. peeblesii, Oenothera claviformis var. peeblesii

Editor: SBuckley, 2010