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Psilocarphus tenellus var. tenellus Nutt.Asteraceae (Sunflower Family)NativeSlender Woolly-heads |
April Photo
Plant Characteristics: Slender,
much-branched, thinly floccose-woolly annual at first often erectish, soon
diffusely spreading, forming mats 5-30 cm. wide, the filiform internodes usually
longer than the leaves; lvs. spatulate, oblanceolate, or oblong or sometimes
nearly linear, 4-5 mm. long, 1.5-3 mm. wide, obtuse, apiculate, gradually
narrowed to base; heads mostly solitary in the forks and at tips of stem and
branches, 3-4 mm. thick, surpassed by the involucrating lvs.; pistillate fls.
about 25-35, sometimes more, their enclosing bracts at maturity obliquely
obovoid, (0.6) 1.5-2.3 mm. long, humpbacked, rather thinly woolly chiefly above,
produced on inner side considerably below the rounded top into an ovate,
horizontal, introrse, scarious appendage about 0.5 mm. long; hermaphrodite fls.
5-6, usually reddish above; achenes obovoid-ellipsoid, 0.6-1.2 mm. long.
Habitat: Dried beds of vernal
pools, and dry open places, cismontane and montane, to 6000 ft.; n. L. Calif. to
B.C.; Channel Ids. April-June.
Name: Greek, psilos, bare, and karphos,
chaff. (Munz, Flora So. Calif. 220). Name
Greek, meaning naked chaff; wrongly explained by Nuttall as meaning slender
chaff, in allusion to the membranous pales.
(Abrams, Vol. IV 492).
Latin, tennellus, quite
delicate. (Jaeger 259).
General: Rare in the study
area, found only in a small dried vernal pool near the edge of the Castaway's
Bluffs. The species, however, is
common in this one small area. The
vernal pond where this species was found was destroyed when a housing subdivision was built on the site in the late 1990’s.
(my comments).
Text Ref: Abrams, Vol. IV
493; Hickman, Ed. 329; Munz, Flora So.
Calif. 220.
Photo Ref: April-May 92
#19,20.
Identity: by R. De Ruff, confirmed by John Johnson.
Computer Ref: Plant Data 425.
Have plant specimen.
Last edit 10/21/02.
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