Mohavea is a plant genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 consisting of two species native to the deserts of the southwestern United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and northern Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

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The two species are both notable annuals flowering in the spring; the ghostflower

Ghostflower

Mohavea confertiflora, the Ghost Flower, is a plant of the family Scrophulariaceae. It is a native of the Southwestern United States, southern California, and Northwest Mexico....

 M. confertiflora features large pale flowers with a pattern of purple spots, while the lesser mohavea M. breviflora has small yellow flowers.

Formerly included in Scrophulariaceae

Scrophulariaceae

Scrophulariaceae, the figwort family, are a family of flowering plants. The plants are annual or perennial herbs with flowers with bilateral or rarely radial symmetry. Members of the Scrophulariaceae have a cosmopolitan distribution, with the majority found in temperate areas, including...

, the genus is now included in the Plantaginaceae

Plantaginaceae

Plantaginaceae Juss. or plantain family, are a family of flowering plants in the order Lamiales. The type genus is Plantago L..In older classifications it used to be the only family of the order Plantaginales, but numerous phylogenetic studies, summarized by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group, have...

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The genus name is derived from the Mojave River

Mojave River

The Mojave River is an intermittent river in the eastern San Bernardino Mountains and Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County, California. The river is notable as most of its flow is underground, while its surface channels remain dry most of the time, with the exception of the headwaters and several...

, where specimens were first collected by John C. Fremont

John C. Frémont

John Charles Frémont , was an American military officer, explorer, and the first candidate of the anti-slavery Republican Party for the office of President of the United States. During the 1840s, that era's penny press accorded Frémont the sobriquet The Pathfinder...

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