Gutierrezia sarothrae
Encyclopedia
Gutierrezia sarothrae is a species of flowering plant in the daisy family
Asteraceae
The Asteraceae or Compositae , is an exceedingly large and widespread family of vascular plants. The group has more than 22,750 currently accepted species, spread across 1620 genera and 12 subfamilies...

 known by the common names broom snakeweed and perennial matchweed. It is native to much of the western half of North America, from central Canada to northern Mexico. It can be found in a number of desert, grassland, and mountain habitats.

This is a dense, bushy subshrub reaching maximum heights around a meter. The multibranched stems and twigs are greenish or tan when young and age to woody brown. There are scattered narrow to thready leaves along the branches.

The plant flowers abundantly in 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...

s of a few flowers each. The flower is about a centimeter long and bright golden yellow with a center of a few long, protruding disc florets and a fringe of ray florets. The plant is toxic to livestock in large quantities, due mainly to the presence of saponin
Saponin
Saponins are a class of chemical compounds, one of many secondary metabolites found in natural sources, with saponins found in particular abundance in various plant species...

s and concentrated selenium
Selenium
Selenium is a chemical element with atomic number 34, chemical symbol Se, and an atomic mass of 78.96. It is a nonmetal, whose properties are intermediate between those of adjacent chalcogen elements sulfur and tellurium...

.

Cultivation and uses

Native Americans on the Great Plains bound the stems together to make brooms. A tea made from the leaves was used to treat rheumatism, stomach ache, and snakebite in humans, and coughs and loose bowels in horses.

External links

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