Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Subshrub

General: Perennial subshrub to 40 cm tall with slender, stellate-puberulent branches and densely stellate-puberulent foliage.

Leaves: Alternate, lanceolate to suborbicular, 1-5 cm long, obtuse to cordate at base, acute, obtuse, or rounded at apex, finely dentate or serrate, thickish and firm, often tinged faintly with purple.

Flowers: Few flowered on axillary peduncles 1-5 mm long, with 1-5 flowers; pedicels subfiliform, 2-5 mm long; 5 sepals,brownish, erect or ascending, lance-ovate, about 1 mm wide, 2.4-3 mm long, sparsely and minutely stellate-puberulent; claws of 5 petals filiform, 5-7 mm, blades rhombic-obovate 0.8-1 mm wide, 1.6-1.8 mm long, cuneate at base, slightly nothed at apex, dorsal appendage attached about 0.4 mm distal to apical notch, narrowly clavate, erect or recurved, about 0.6 mm long; stipe 1.4-1.8 mm long at anthesis; staminal column funnelform, 0.8-1 mm long.

Fruits: Subglobose capsule 5-6 mm in diameter, finely stellate-puberulent and muricate with greenish or purplish processes to 1.4 mm long.

Ecology: Found on dry rocky to sandy slopes; 2,000-4,000 ft (610-1219 m); flowers March-October.

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

Notes: Very distinctive flowers, with the delicate purple claws on the petals connecting to the staminal column. This species distinguished from the other regional Ayenia, A. microphylla by being herbaceous, the former a shrub with mostly woody branches, and having mostly thinner, lanceolate leaves where microphylla has consistent roundish, more oval leaves. When vegetative, look for the serrate, lanceolate leaves, stellate hairs and fruits.

Ethnobotany: Unknown

Etymology: Ayenia is named for Louis de Noailles (1713-1793) the Duke of d-Ayen, while filiformis means thread-like.

Synonyms: None

Editor: SBuckley 2010, FSCoburn 2015