Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Forb/Herb

General: Perennial herbs or small shrubs with many stems, leaves and stems puberulent, rush-like, 20-40 cm long.

Leaves: Alternate, needle shaped to linear, crowded, 6-14 mm long.

Flowers: Terminal racemes, small, whitish with green or purple veins, the keel crested or beaked, borne in short, dense, terminal racemes, sometimes few or solitary in the leaf axils, petals united below.

Fruits: Capsule 2-celled, thin, flat, with the wing of the capsule narrow, dehiscent. Seeds with a small protuberance near the hilum, with a thickened center and a thin, dry margin.

Ecology: Found on rocky mesas and slopes; 3,500-5,000 ft (1067-1524 m); flowering March-October.

Distribution: AZ, s NM, s TX; south to n MEX.

Notes: Distinctive with its many clustered, thin, erect green stems, linear, crowded leaves which ascend up stems and short inflorescences topping plants with white flowers that are streaked with a deep purple. Distinguished from the very similar P. alba by the short-hairy stems where P alba has hair-less stems.

Ethnobotany: Unknown

Etymology: Polygala is from Greek polys, many or much, and gala, milk, while scoparioides means broomlike.

Synonyms: None

Editor: LCrumbacher 2011, FSCoburn 2015