''Bloomeria clevelandii'' is a rare species of flowering plant that is known by the common name San Diego goldenstar. It is native to a strip of scrub and coastal grassland in

San Diego County, California San Diego County (), officially the County of San Diego, is a county in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,298,634, making it California's second-most populous county and the fi ...

, and adjacent

Baja California Baja California (; 'Lower California'), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California), is a state in Mexico. It is the northernmost and westernmost of the 32 federal entities of Mex ...

Genetic analysis Genetic analysis is the overall process of studying and researching in fields of science that involve genetics and molecular biology. There are a number of applications that are developed from this research, and these are also considered parts of ...

of several morphologically similar genera shows that this species, which was named ''Muilla clevelandii'' for several decades, is not very closely related to the other members of ''

Muilla The genus ''Muilla'' includes four to five species of flowering plants. Taxonomy The genus name is a taxonomic anagram of ''Allium'' (in fact, the letters are in exact reverse order), the onion genus, for the flowers' resemblance. In the APG ...

'' and is moved back to ''Bloomeria''. Its

specific epithet In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

''clevelandii'' honors 19th-century San Diego-based plant collector and lawyer Daniel Cleveland.

Description

''Bloomeria clevelandii'' is a perennial herb growing from a

corm A corm, bulbo-tuber, or bulbotuber is a short, vertical, swollen underground plant stem that serves as a storage organ that some plants use to survive winter or other adverse conditions such as summer drought and heat (perennation). The word ' ...

and producing 2 to 8 narrow leaves up to 15 centimeters long. The erect

inflorescence An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Morphologically, it is the modified part of the shoot of seed plants where flowers are formed o ...

arises from ground level and may be up to 70 centimeters tall. It is shaped like an

umbel In botany, an umbel is an inflorescence that consists of a number of short flower stalks (called pedicels) that spread from a common point, somewhat like umbrella ribs. The word was coined in botanical usage in the 1590s, from Latin ''umbella'' "p ...

with up to 30 flowers borne on

pedicels In botany, a pedicel is a stem that attaches a single flower to the inflorescence. Such inflorescences are described as ''pedicellate''. Description Pedicel refers to a structure connecting a single flower to its inflorescence. In the absenc ...

2 or 3 centimeters long. The flower has six green-veined yellow

tepal A tepal is one of the outer parts of a flower (collectively the perianth). The term is used when these parts cannot easily be classified as either sepals or petals. This may be because the parts of the perianth are undifferentiated (i.e. of very ...

s each up to a centimeter long. The species is threatened by the destruction of its coastal habitat to urban development and by impacts from vehicles and trash dumping.California Native Plant Society Rare Plant Profile

References

External links

Jepson Manual Treatment for ''Bloomeria clevelandii''USDA Plants Profile''Bloomeria clevelandii'' — UC Photos gallery
clevelandii Flora of California Flora of Baja California Natural history of the California chaparral and woodlands Natural history of San Diego County, California Plants described in 1885 Taxa named by Sereno Watson {{Asparagaceae-stub