''Eremogone congesta'' is a species of flowering plant in the family

Caryophyllaceae Caryophyllaceae, commonly called the pink family or carnation family, is a family of flowering plants. It is included in the dicotyledon order Caryophyllales in the APG III system, alongside 33 other families, including Amaranthaceae, Cactacea ...

known by the common name ballhead sandwort. It is native to western North America from central Canada to the American southwest.

Description

This is a perennial herb forming a tuft of slender upright stems up to about 40 centimeters tall. The leaves are needlelike to thready, up to 8 centimeters long and only a few millimeters wide. They may be fleshy or flat and they often have a very sharp tip. Most of the leaves are located in a patch at the base of the plant, and there are a few scattered along the mostly naked stem. The

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 ...

is an open or rounded cyme of five-petalled white flowers. The fruit is a toothed capsule containing several reddish seeds.

Uses

The plant was used for a variety of medicinal purposes by Native American groups, including the

Shoshone The Shoshone or Shoshoni ( or ) are a Native American tribe with four large cultural/linguistic divisions: * Eastern Shoshone: Wyoming * Northern Shoshone: southern Idaho * Western Shoshone: Nevada, northern Utah * Goshute: western Utah, easter ...

External links

Jepson Manual TreatmentUSDA Plants ProfileEthnobotanyPhoto gallery
* Caryophyllaceae Flora of Western Canada Flora of the Western United States Flora of the Sierra Nevada (United States) Flora of the California desert regions Plants described in 1838 Plants used in traditional Native American medicine Flora without expected TNC conservation status {{Caryophyllaceae-stub