Rose And White Buckwheat

Eriogonum gracillimum is found in the Coast, Transverse, and scattered mountain desert ranges in Fresno, Inyo, Kern, Kings, Los Angeles, Madera, Merced, Monterey, Riverside, San Benito, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Tulare counties. The species is often common and occasionally even weedy.

Herbs, erect to spreading, annual, 1-5 dm, thinly tomentose, green-ish, grayish, or reddish. Stems: caudex absent; aerial flowering stems erect, not striated but sometimes angled, solid, not fistulose, 0.1-0.8 dm, tomentose. Leaves basal and cauline; basal: petiole 0.5-1 cm, floccose; basal blade oblanceolate to oblong, 2-4 × 0.3-1 cm, tomentose abaxially, floccose to glabrate and grayish or greenish adaxially, margins crenulate, often slightly revolute; cauline sessile, blade narrowly oblong, 0.5-2(-6) × 0.2-0.8(-1.5) cm, similar to basal blade. Inflorescences cymose, mostly open, 5-35 × 5-35 cm; branches thinly tomentose; bracts 3, scalelike, 1-3 × 1-2.5 mm. Peduncles spreading, straight, capillary, 0.8-2.5 cm, glabrous. Involucres campanulate, 1.8-2 × 2-3 mm, glandular-puberulent, not densely tomentose adaxially; teeth 5, erect, 0.4-0.8 mm. Flowers 2-2.5 mm; perianth white to rose, glandular-puberulent; tepals monomorphic, oblong to elliptic; stamens included, 1-2 mm; filaments pilose proximally. Achenes light brown, 3-gonous, 1-1.2(-1.5) mm, glabrous. 2n = 40.

Calif.

Flowering year-round.

Sandy to gravelly or clayey flats and slopes, mixed grassland, chaparral, saltbush, and creosote bush communities, oak and conifer woodlands; 0-1100m.

Eriogonum angulosum subsp. gracillimum (S. Watson) S. Stokes; E. angulosum Bentham var. gracillimum (S. Watson) M. E. Jones; E. angulosum subsp. victorense (M. E. Jones) S. Stokes

Eriogonum gracillimum is a species of wild buckwheat known by the common name rose and white buckwheat. It is endemic to California but is common and widespread in many areas there. This is a spindly annual herb reaching anywhere from 5 to 50 centimeters in height. Most of the leaves are basal with a few scattered on the thin branched stem and are generally one to four centimeters long and somewhat woolly, with edges rolled under. Along the thread-thin branches of the stem appear small clusters of flowers which hang on short stalks in bell-shaped involucres. The two-millimeter-wide flowers are bright rose and white in color.