Inflorescence branches lanate to tomentose or floccose.

Flowering year-round. Sandy and gravelly flats and slopes, grassland and chaparral commu-nities, oak and pine woodlands; 0-1400(-1600) m; Calif.; Mexico (Baja California).

Variety gracile is widespread and common to locally weedy throughout much of California, southward to northern Baja California, Mexico. Two collections (Schott 4, F; Thurber s.n., 1852, F, NY) made in the early 1850s supposedly in Sonora, Mexico, and an 1865 Torrey collection (454, NY) from Nevada, are well outside the known range of E. gracile and are discounted as to location.