Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Forb/Herb, Subshrub

General: Suffrutescent perennial herbs to subshrubs, 20-40 cm tall,from a stout, woody, rough-barked base; stems erect, branched above the base, sparsely strigose and pustulose-pubescent.

Leaves: Leaves alternate and crowded along stems; blades linear, strongly revolute (edges rolled toward the underside), 1-3 cm long and 1 mm wide, sparsely strigose.

Flowers: Small, inconspicuous, and whitish, crowded in leafy terminal cymes; calyx divided nearly to the base into 5 lobes, the lobes linear, 7-10 mm long; corolla tubular-funnelform, 7 mm long, white to off-white, 5-lobed.

Fruits: Capsules globose to ovoid, full of minute, brownish, finely alveolate (honeycomb-textured) seeds.

Ecology: Found in dry gypsum sands and soils, from 3,500-4,500 ft; flowers June-September.

Distribution: c, e NM and w TX; south to n MEX

Notes: The genus Nama has at different times been placed in Hyrophyllaceae (the water-leaf family) and Boraginaceae (the borage family), so you may need to check both families before finding it in reference books and herbarium cabinets. This low shrubby Nama is distinguished by its stout woody base; crowded, sparsely hairy, upward-pointing linear leaves; and funnel-shaped white flowers, about 1 cm long, which are at least partly obscured by the leaves. The species is considered an indicator of gypsum soils. The species name has at times been spelled as N. carnosa and as N. carnosum.

Ethnobotany: Unknown

Etymology: Nama comes from the Greek word nama, stream, possibly referring to the habitat of one of the first described species of the genus; carnosum comes from the Latin carnem, fleshy, probably referring to the slighly succulent leaves.

Editor: AHazelton 2017