Cryptantha circumscissa
Encyclopedia
Cryptantha circumscissa is a species of flowering plant in the borage family
Boraginaceae
Boraginaceae, the Borage or Forget-me-not family, include a variety of shrubs, trees, and herbs, totaling about 2,000 species in 146 genera found worldwide.A number of familiar plants belong to this family....

 known by the common name cushion cryptantha. It is native to western North America from Washington to Baja California
Baja California
Baja California officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is both the northernmost and westernmost state of Mexico. Before becoming a state in 1953, the area was known as the North...

 to Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...

, where it grows in many types of habitat from mountains to desert. It is also known from Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

. This is an annual herb producing a short, bristly, multibranched stem tangled into a mat no more than 10 centimeters tall. It grows from a red taproot
Taproot
A taproot is an enlarged, somewhat straight to tapering plant root that grows vertically downward. It forms a center from which other roots sprout laterally.Plants with taproots are difficult to transplant...

 which dries purple. The leaves are up to 1.5 centimeters long, linear to widely lance-shaped, and densely hairy to bristly. The inflorescence
Inflorescence
An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Strictly, it is the part of the shoot of seed plants where flowers are formed and which is accordingly modified...

is a length of developing fruits with a dense cluster of up to 5 flowers at the tip. The flower has a five-lobed white corolla with yellow appendages at the top of its tube.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK