Common Name: common dunebroom

Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Shrub

General: Much-branched, aromatic shrub of sand dune environments, to 1.5 m tall; often partly buried in sand.

Leaves: Alternate and pinnately compound, 3-13 cm long, with 8-40 leaflets per leaf; leaflets linear, 5-15 mm long and 1 mm wide, involute (with edges rolled upward), inconspicuously strigose and glandular-pinctate.

Flowers: Inflorescence a loose, terminal raceme, 2-13 cm long. Flowers lacking petals. Calyx yellow-green, bell-shaped or top-shaped, 3 mm long, 10-ribbed at the base and 5-toothed at the apex, with a white-ciliate margin. Stamens long-exserted, yellow.

Fruits: Pods oblong-ovoid, 5-6 mm long and 2-3 mm wide, glabrous, yellow-green and covered with dark glands; containing one seed.

Ecology: Found in sandy soils, particularly in stabilized sand dunes; generally from 4,000 - 7,000 ft (1219-2134 m), but found as low as 1,900 ft (579 m) in the Grand Canyon; flowers June to September.

Distribution: A regional endemic to the southern Colorado Plateau; ne AZ, nw NM, and se UT. Extends west down the Grand Canyon as far as mile 171. There is one record from CO, collected near Four Corners Monument.

Notes: This distinct shrub is recognizable by its aromatic, glandular, pinnately compound leaves, whispy and broomlike overall appearance, unusual flowers that lack petals but have showy yellow stamens, and small yellowish seed pods that appear polka-dotted with dark-colored glands. It is an uncommon plant, but expect to find it in sandy habitats above the Mogollon Rim. It is similar to, and previously treated in the same genus as the round dunebroom, Errazurizia rotundata, which is an even more rare species found only near Winslow and Tuba City in northern Arizona. E. rotundata is a smaller, ground-hugging subshrub with round, hairy leaflets (P. filifolia has linear and mostly hairless leaflets). Other aromatic legumes include Psoralidium lanceolatum and Psorothamnus scoparius, which do not have pinnately compound leaves, and the many Dalea spp, which have petals in the classic pea-flower (papilionoid) configuration.

Ethnobotany: Used medicinally by the Hopi and the Ramah Navajo. Hopi also used it basketry and kachina masks.

Etymology: Parryella is named for Charles Christopher Parry (1823-1890), a surgeon and botanist with the United States and Mexico Boundary Survey; filifolia refers to the narrow or filiform (threadlike) leaflets on the plant.

Editor: AHazelton 2015, AHazelton 2017