Cylindropuntia fulgida, the jumping cholla, also known as the hanging chain cholla, is a cholla cactus native to Sonora and the Southwestern United States.
Coleogyne ramosissima or blackbrush, is a low lying, dark grayish-green, aromatic, spiny, perennial, soft wooded shrub, native to the deserts of the southwestern United States. It is called blackbrush because the gray branches darken when wet by rains. It is in the rose family (Rosaceae), and is the only species in the monotypic genus Coleogyne.
Arenaria macradenia is a species of flowering plant in the pink family known by the common names Mojave sandwort and desert sandwort.
Astragalus cimae is a species of milkvetch known by the common name Cima milkvetch. It is native to the Mojave Desert and its sky island woodlands of eastern California western Nevada, especially on calcareous soils, including the Cima Dome area in the Mojave National Preserve.
Astragalus layneae is a species of milkvetch known by the common name widow's milkvetch. It is native to the Mojave Desert and surrounding mountain ridges in California and Nevada.
Tetrapteron palmeri is a species of evening primrose known by the common name Palmer evening primrose. It is native to the western United States from California to Idaho, where it grows in several habitat types, including desert and sagebrush. It is a roughly hairy annual herb growing in a low patch on the ground, generally with no stem. The leaves are widely lance-shaped and up to about 5 centimeters long, with a few small teeth along the edges. The nodding inflorescence produces flowers with yellow petals only 2 or 3 millimeters long each and a noticeable bulbous stigma tip which may be up to a centimeter wide. The fruit is a leathery capsule around half a centimeter long with small wings near the tip.
Cleomella obtusifolia is a species of flowering plant in the cleome family known by the common name Mojave stinkweed. It is native to the Mojave Desert and adjacent hills, where it grows in alkaline soils in the desert scrub. It is an annual herb producing a rough, hairy stem up to 90 centimeters long. The branching stem grows erect when new and then the branches droop to the ground with age, forming a bushy clump or mat. Each leaf is made up of three fleshy oval leaflets. Flowers appear in dense racemes on older stems and solitary in leaf axils on new stems. Each flower has generally four hairy green sepals and four yellow petals grouped together on one side of the involucre. The whiskery yellow stamens protrude up to 1.5 centimeters from the flower. The fruit is a hairy, valved capsule a few millimeters in length. It hangs at the tip of the remaining flower receptacle.
Eriogonum viridescens is a species of wild buckwheat known by the common name twotooth buckwheat. It is endemic to California, where it grows in the Central Coast Ranges through the Transverse Ranges and into the Mojave Desert, as well as in the Central Valley. It grows in a variety of habitat types, generally on clay and sandy soils.
Leptosiphon breviculus is a species of flowering plant in the phlox family known by the common name Mojave linanthus. It is endemic to California, where it is known from the Mojave Desert and dry spots in the adjacent Transverse Ranges.
Mortonia utahensis is a species of flowering plant in the family Celastraceae known by the common name Utah mortonia. It is native to the southwestern United States, where it grows in desert and mountain scrub and woodland, often on limestone substrates. It is a broomlike shrub growing erect to a maximum height near 1.2 meters. Its branching stems are white to gray in color and rough-haired. The thick, curling, concave leaves are oval in shape, pointed or rounded at the tip, and up to about 1.5 centimeters long. The inflorescence is a narrow panicle of many flowers with five rough greenish sepals and five thin white petals a few millimeters long. The fruit is a cluster of nutlets.
Nemacladus glanduliferus is a species of flowering plant in the bellflower family known by the common name glandular threadplant. It is native to the southwestern United States and Baja California, where it grows in desert and plateau habitat. It is an annual herb producing a purplish or brownish green, branching stem up to about 25 centimeters tall. Small oval leaves occur at the base of the plant. The inflorescence is a series of zigzagging branches bearing occasional flowers on thin, erect pedicels. There is a single small bract at the base of each pedicel. The flower at the curved tip of the pedicel is just a few millimeters wide. There are five pointed sepals and five white corolla lobes, generally three in the upper lip and two in the lower.
Phacelia nashiana is a species of phacelia known by the common name Charlotte's phacelia. It is endemic to California, where it is known only from the ecotone where the lower Sierra Nevada and Tehachapi Mountains transition into the Mojave Desert. It grows in scrub and woodland and on granite mountain slopes.
Polygala intermontana is a species of flowering plant in the milkwort family known by the common name intermountain milkwort. It is native to the southwestern United States from Utah to northern Arizona and far eastern California, where it grows in desert scrub and woodland habitat. It is a small shrub growing erect or forming tangled, mats of thorny, highly branched stems. The stems are hairy in texture with white fibers. The sparse leaves are linear to oval in shape. The inflorescence bears one to seven flowers, each just a few millimeters in length. The flower has a winglike pair of greenish or whitish sepals and a keeled central petal that lacks the beaked tip of other Polygala species.
Ribes quercetorum is a species of currant known by the common names rock gooseberry, oak gooseberry and oakwoods gooseberry. It is native to the mountains and hills of California from the San Francisco Bay Area south into Baja California and east into Arizona.
Stephanomeria pauciflora is a species of flowering plant in the aster family known by the common names brownplume wirelettuce, few-flowered wirelettuce, and prairie skeletonplant. It is native to the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, where it grows in many types of habitat, including many desert areas, woodlands, and plains. It is a perennial herb or bushy subshrub producing one or more sturdy, stiff stems with many spreading branches, taking a rounded but vertical form. The leaves are mostly basal and ephemeral, with smaller, scale-like leaves occurring on the upper stem. Flower heads occur at intervals along the mostly naked stems, especially near the tips. Each has a cylindrical base covered in hairless phyllaries. It contains 3 to 6 florets, each with an elongated tube and a flat pink ligule. The fruit is an achene tipped with a spreading cluster of plumelike pappus bristles. These are usually brownish, but are sometimes white. The specific epithet pauciflora, refers to the Latin term for 'few flowered'.
Frasera albomarginata is a species of flowering plant in the gentian family known by the common name desert green gentian, or desert frasera.
Tetradymia argyraea is a species of flowering plant in the aster family known by the common names striped cottonthorn and striped horsebrush. It is native to the desert mountains of the southwestern United States, particularly of California, Nevada, and Arizona, where it grows in desert woodland habitat. It is a woolly, spiny shrub growing one half to nearly two meters in maximum height. The erect stems are white-woolly except for bare stripes at intervals. The leaves are linear in shape and harden as they age, becoming spiny. The larger leaves are woolly and there are clusters of smaller, threadlike leaves which may be hairless. The inflorescence bears two to five flower heads which are each enveloped in five thick phyllaries coated in white woolly hairs. Each head contains five pale yellow flowers each around a centimeter long. Flowers are produced in summer, as late as September. The fruit is an achene a few millimeters long tipped with a pappus of bristles.
Thamnosma montana, the turpentine broom, or Mojave desert-rue, is a shrub in the citrus family Rutaceae. It is native to the deserts of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. Except immediately after heavy rains, its straight stems usually lack leaves, giving it a broom-like appearance. The Latin specific epithet montana refers to mountains or coming from mountains.
Toxicoscordion brevibracteatum is a species of flowering plant known by the common name desert deathcamas. It is native to Baja California, Sonora, and California, where it grows in sandy desert habitat among creosote and Joshua trees.
Hemizonella is a genus of North American plants in the tarweed tribe within the sunflower family.
