Duration: Perennial
Nativity: Native
Lifeform: Forb/Herb, Subshrub
General: Short-lived perennial herbs, 20-40 cm tall, from a taproot; stems erect or ascending, several to many arising from the base, branched only in the inflorescence, strigillose with slender retrorsely appressed hairs and also decidedly bristly with stiff spreading hairs, these 1-3 mm long.
Leaves: Clustered in a persistent basal rosette and alternate along the stems, sessile; blades elongate-oblanceolate, to 15 cm long and 1 cm broad, smoothly strigillose-tomentose with abundant fine appressed hairs, with occasional spreading bristles; cauline leaves reduced above.
Flowers: White and yellow, in densely flowered cymes 4-10 cm long; calyx 6-7 mm long in flower, extending to 7-12 mm long in fruit, hispid, the lobes unequal in length and longer than nutlets; corolla salverform, white, yellow at the throat, the tube 6-10 mm long, the limb 6-10 mm wide.
Fruits: Nutlets 4, rugose or rugose-tuberculate, 3 mm long; style exceeding the mature fruit.
Ecology: Found on dry slopes, alluvial soil and talus, silty valley flats, gravelly limestone, or caliche soils, from 4,500-6,000 ft (1372-1829 m); flowers April to June.
Distribution: c and s NM, east to w TX; south to Chihuahua.
Notes: Cryptantha is a genus of bristly herbs with white or yellow flowers in spikes that are usually 1-sided and curling like a scorpion-s tail (-scorpioid-). C. oblata is an uncommon perennial Cryptantha, known from relatively few scattered populations throughout central and southern New Mexico and neighboring west Texas and Chihuahua. Look for a perennial with dense basal tufts of bristly oblanceolate leaves; multiple leafy flowering stalks arising out of the tufts; each of the stalks ending in several rounded clusters of white flowers with yellow centers. It is quite similar to the also uncommon C. paysonii, the only difference being in the flowers, which are smaller in C. oblata and homostylic (styles are all the same length), with pale yellow throats. C. paysonii is heterostylic (with styles of differing lengths) and has corolla tubes 12-14 mm long, with often bright yellow throats. Also similar to the more common C. cinerea, but that species has smooth, shiny nutlets and has short scales in the inside of the corolla tube.
Ethnobotany: Unknown, but other species in the genus have uses.
Etymology: Cryptantha comes from the Greek krypto, "hidden," and anthos, "flower," a reference to the first described species in the genus which has inconspicuous flowers that self-fertilize without opening; oblata means elongate and oval shaped
Synonyms: Krynitzkia oblata, Oreocarya oblata
Editor: AHazelton 2015
