Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Subshrub

General: Shrubby, spinescent perennials, herbage yellowish, thickly gland-dotted.

Leaves: Narrow, fleshy, gland-dotted, linear-spatulate, alternate, entire, few, early deciduous.

Flowers: Dark blue, narrowly funnelform or urn-shaped, borne in small racemose or cymose clusters, style exserted.

Fruits: Capsule deeply 2-lobed, the stipe of the capsule longer than the calyx. Seeds 4-6 mm long, smooth or somewhat wrinkled.

Ecology: Found from 4,500 ft or below, on desert mesas and slopes, (1372 m); flowering February-April.

Distribution: s UT, s NV, se CA, AZ; Sonora, and Baja Calif., MEX.

Ethnobotany: Used as an emetic, for painful abdomen, taken as a laxative, for chest pains, colds, rubbed on open wounds, taken as a hallucinogen, as an aid in hunting, used to keep snakes away, used by women as a douche, smoked for colds, taken for smallpox, gonorrhea, and as a tonic.

Etymology: Thamnosma is from the Greek for odorous shrub, while montana means mountain.

Synonyms: None

Editor: SBuckley 2010, LCrumbacher 2011