Common Name: desert almond

Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Shrub

General: Shrubs, suckering, much branched , 10-20(-30) dm, thorny. Twigs with axillary end buds, glabrous or canescent.

Leaves: deciduous; sessile; blade oblanceolate to linear, 0.5-2 0.1-0.2(-0.4) cm, base long-attenuate, margins nearly entire or obscurely and remotely serrulate in distal 1/3, teeth blunt to sharp, sometimes glandular, apex rounded to acute, surfaces puberulent or glabrous or low-papillate (var. punctata).

Flowers: Inflorescences solitary flowers or 2-flowered fascicles. Pedicels 0-4 mm, glabrous. Flowers unisexual, plants dioecious , blooming at leaf emergence; hypanthium campanulate, 1.5-3 mm, glabrous externally; sepals erect-spreading, triangular, 0.7-1 mm, margins entire, surfaces glabrous; petals white to yellowish, elliptic, obovate, or suborbiculate, 1.4-2.5(-4) mm; ovaries hairy.

Fruits: Drupes gray to red-brown, ovoid, - compressed , 7-15 mm, densely puberulent; hypanthium tardily deciduous ; mesocarps leathery to dry; stones ovoid, - flattened.

Ecology: Found on sandy or gravelly washes, dry mountain slopes, desert scrub, pinyon-juniper-Joshua tree woodlands; from 200-2100 m; Flowering Mar-May; fruiting May-Jul

Distribution: sw US, nw MEX

Notes: There are two varieties; var facsiculata, found throughout the sw US and nw MEX, has leaf blades sparsely to densely puberulent, not papillate. Var. punctata, found along the central coast of CA, has leaf blades glabrous, sometimes papillate. This species is distinguished from others in the genus by the narrow leaves which are mostly about 2 mm wide and clustered in fascicles; the distinctly hairy almond-shaped fruit; and the flowers which are usually solitary (sometimes paired) in the leaf axils and almost sessile.

Synonyms: Emplectocladus fasciculatus

Editor: Hazelton pasted from FNA