Yakima Bird'S-Beak

Description

Annual with spreading branches, 10-50 cm, glaucous-green or grey-purple, densely glandular- and nonglandular-hairy. Stems paniculately branched; herbage green, pubescent (spreading-viscid and short-glandular-pilose) with long soft white hairs. Leaves of main stem alternate, deeply divided into 3 linear to thread-like segments, 20-40 mm; of the branches entire, few and remote. Inflorescences "leafy" 2-4 flowered small capitate spikes, 15-20 mm, head-like; bracts gland-tipped, of 2 kinds: those subtending the spike 4-7, linear-lanceolate, palmately divided (lobes 3 in lower -), 10-20 mm; those subtending each flower entire or pinnately divided, 12-18 mm, elliptical, acute, entire, arched outward, purplish. Flower calyx purplish, 10-15 mm (shorter than the inner floral bract), tube 2-4 mm, tip bifid 2-3 mm deep, ca 1/3 of the calyx length; corolla 10-20 mm, erect, straight or nearly so, maroon, puberulent with reflexed hairs; lips subequal in length: galea pale, whitish, with a yellow-tip, finely pubescent and dark purple dorsally: lower lip shorter than upper: throat moderately inflated, 4-6 mm wide; stamens 2: filaments glabrous or nearly so, dilated above base and forming a U-shaped curve near the anther: anther sac 1 (with vestiges of a second), ciliate. Fruit is a capsule, slender, pointed, 8-10 mm long. Seeds 4-6, 2-2.5 mm, rather reniform, shallowly reticulate, rather smooth between nets.