Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Forb/Herb

General: Herbaceous perennials, to 40 cm tall, herbage puberulent.

Leaves: Opposite, sessile, elliptic to oblong or lanceolate, 10-20 mm wide, margins toothed, the undersides reticulate-veined.

Flowers: Heads small, 5-flowered, the corollas white to purple, involucres 6-8.5 mm high, phyllaries minutely hairy, with sessile glands, the heads born in clusters on branch tips.

Fruits: Achenes ridged, with hispid ridges. Pappus in an irregularly cleft crown of thin, membranaceous scales, to 1 mm high.

Ecology: Found in rich soil in canyons, from 6,000-8,000 ft (1829-2438 m); flowering August-September.

Distribution: Arizona, New Mexico; Mexico.

Notes: Differentiate from Stevia serrata by the few, opposite leaves, and S. lemmonii by the reticulate-veined undersides of S. plummerae.

Ethnobotany: Unknown

Etymology: Stevia is named after the Spanish botanist Pedro Jaime Esteve (d. 1566), while plummerae is named for Sara Allen Plummer (1836-1923) an American botanist.

Synonyms: Stevia plummerae var. alba

Editor: LCrumbacher 2011