Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Forb/Herb

General: Perennial with a long taproot, a small stemless herb 4-20 cm tall.

Leaves: Ovate to oblong, blades 1-8.5 cm long, 0.5-6 cm broad; pinnate to bipinnate, rarely ternate-pinnate, fleshy, pale, leaflets entire to pinnately lobed, lobes acute or obtuse, usually confluent and glabrate.

Flowers: Involucre a low scarious sheath of 1-2 conspicuous, nerved bracts; or purplish connate cup with irregular, many-nerved lobes; involucel of conspicuous, ovate to ovate-oblong, subconnate, many-nerved, greenish or purple bractlets, usually with a whitish margin, about equaling flowers; umbels compact, with fertile rays usually 1-5, glabrous, 5-25 mm long, inner rays shorter and umbellate usually sterile; pedicels less than 1 mm long, flowers purplish.

Fruits: Ovoid to ovoid-oblong, 8-17 mm long, 8-17 mm broad, wings long and slender, slightly enlarged at base, twice to thrice as broad as body.

Ecology: Found on gravelly slopes, often on rocky outcrops and along ridges from 3,000-7,000 ft (914-2134 m); flowers March-May.

Notes: In flower and fruit this is a distinctive plant, when it is not in flower the plant looks similar to Lomatium, only with not as dissected leaves. The bracts are distinctively whitish-purple to dark purple and the plant is often low-growing, with gray-green divided leaves and the inflorescences prostrate or ascending.

Ethnobotany: The roots were eaten.

Etymology: Cymopterus comes from the Greek kuma, wave and pteron, wing, referring to the fact that some species have wavy wings, while multinervatus means many nerved.

Synonyms: None

Editor: SBuckley 2010, FSCoburn 2015