Yellow Twining Snapdragon

Description

The species is a hairless herbaceous annual, growing long, thin, vine-like stems which climb on objects, including other plants, for support. The inflorescence is composed of a tendril-like pedicel which may be up to 10 centimeters long and coils tightly to help the plant climb. At its tip is a single flower which is bright yellow to gold in color, dotted with dark maroon, and just over a centimeter long.The stem is similar to that of a vine, winding up anywhere from 9 to 100 centimeters long on other plants, and it does not have a gland. It winds around the branchlets of other plants for protection. The base of the stem is woolly. The petiole, the stalk that attaches the leaf blade to the stem, is 0-5 millimeters long with the leaf blade being 6 to 50 millimeters.Leaves are lanceolate, as in shaped like the tip of a lance, as well as being linear to ovate.Both the plant's steam and leaves are bright green. Flowers are self-pollinating via the process of cleistogamy, meaning they are fertilized as buds that never need to open.The flower's corolla, as in all of the petals collectively together, is 10 to 13 millimeters long. Pedicels (stems that attach a single flower to the inflorescence) are thread-like, measuring 3 to 10 centimeters long, and are able to intertwine around the stems of other plants. They are even thinner and longer than those of similar snapdragon species of the Mohave Desert. Its coloring is yellow and gold with speckles of maroon. The fragile fruit are ovoid to spherical, 3 to 5 millimeters long. Seeds are black, wing-shaped, with 4 to 6 thick ridges, and 1 millimeter long