Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Forb/Herb

General: Herbaceous perennials from slender simple stems that are glabrous, 60-120 cm tall.

Leaves: Irregularly alternate, sessile and linear, 9-15 cm long, 3-7 mm across, somewhat subsucculent, glaucous and conduplicate.

Flowers: Umbels later from few to several of the upper nodes, several to many flowered, with peduncles 1.5 cm long. Flowers small, calyx lobes ovate-lanceolate, 3-4 mm long, minutely to irregularly pilosulose, corolla roate, pale green and tinted with purple, the hoods deeply saccate, 2-2.5 mm long.

Fruits: Follicles unknown-

Ecology: Found in rocky slopes in open oak forest, from 3,500-7,000 ft (1067- 2134 m); flowers June and July.

Distribution: Ranges across northern Arizona along the edge of the Mogollon rim and into southern and southeastern Utah.

Notes: Some uncertainty about this taxa, and whether it belongs as a variety of A. engelmanniana. Woodson 1954 wrote, -I am rather reluctantly assigning it to full status as a species because there are several, not merely one or at best a few, structural differences of the flowers, and because the populations occurs well within the range of A. engelmanniana.-

Etymology: Asclepias is named for the Greek god of healing Asklepios, while Rusbyi is named for Henry Hurd Rusby.

Synonyms: Acerates rusbyi, Asclepias engelmanniana var. rusbyi

Editor: SBuckley 2014