Common Name: cockroachplant

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Subshrub

General: Subshrubs, 20-60 cm tall; stems bright green, sometimes white, gray, or light tan with age, branched, often woody at the base, lightly pubescent.

Leaves: Leaves mostly alternate, short-petiolate; blades bright green, lanceolate, sparsely hirsute, 2-4 cm long.

Flowers: Yellow or sometimes blue, solitary or in clusters of 2 or 3 at branch tips; generally with 5 petals which pinwheel out in an overlapping whorl from the end of the corolla tube, corolla tube 6-9 mm long, pubescent externally.

Fruits: Pair of elongated follicles (capsules that split apart along a single suture line) bearing long, slender, black seeds, the seeds with a deciduous tuft of long white hairs at the tips.

Ecology: Found on rocky and gravely slopes, often in canyons, from 2,000-4,500 ft (610-1372 m), flowers July-October.

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

Notes: Distinguished by being a semi-short erect perennial subshrub to ca. 60 cm; alternate leaves (some appearing opposite at first glance) which tend to hang downward with conspicuous, white, appressed hairs aligned towards the leaf tip in straight lines; hairy, linear calyx lobes; and a showy yellow, tubular corolla with lobes overlapping and emerging from a twisted bud.

Ethnobotany: Contains alkaloids used as an insecticide to cockroaches, flies, fleas, lice and mosquitos.

Etymology: Haplophyton comes from Greek kaploos which means simple and phyton which means plant; cimicidum is from the Latin cimex (bug), and -cide from the Latin caedere (to kill), referring to the plant-s use as an insecticide.

Synonyms: H. cimicidum var. crooksii, Haplophyton crooksii

Editor: LCrumbacher 2011, FSCoburn 2015, AHazelton 2015