Wire Lettuce
Desert Straw
Stephanomeria pauciflora
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PERENNIAL HERB: Grows and flowers nearly year round. Large plants up to
a meter tall and a meter wide are slightly woody below. Mature plants develop many
curving stems, some living, many dead giving a basket-like appearance. Broken
green stems exude milky sap like other members of the lettuce subfamily.
RANGE: Quite common on rocky slopes, washes and on disturbed sites throughout the Sonoran Desert. An
occasional weed on vacant city lots in Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona areas.
FLOWERS: Lavender flowers appear to have five or six petals. However,
these are composite flowers - each 'petal' is actually a distinct flower - notice the five
notches at tip of each representing five petals. Each of the composite's flowers is equipped with
an ovary, two-parted stigma and stamens.
ACHENE: Each seed is topped with a plumose pappus that sheds easily.
UNARMED.
LEAVES:
Small, linear leaves are scale-like and are shed after drought leaving the
green, wiry stems to photosynthesize. The many dead, arching straw stems act as
a sunscreen allowing the plant to flourish well into hot, dry periods.
Each flower has a strap-shaped corolla. This photo is hosted as Wikimedia.