''Greeneocharis circumscissa'' is a species of flowering plant in the

borage family Boraginaceae, the borage or forget-me-not family, includes about 2,000 species of shrubs, trees and herbs in 146, to 156 genera with a worldwide distribution. The APG IV system from 2016 classifies the Boraginaceae as single family of the order ...

, known by the common name cushion cryptantha. It is native to western North America from

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on ...

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 ...

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...

and it is also found in

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

. It grows in sandy or gravelly types of habitat, from mountains to desert, below above sea level.

Philip Alexander Munz Philip Alexander Munz (1892–1974) was an American botanist, plant taxonomist and educator who worked at the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden and was a professor of botany at Pomona College, serving as dean there for three years. In 1935 Munz pub ...

This is an

annual Annual may refer to: * Annual publication, periodical publications appearing regularly once per year **Yearbook ** Literary annual * Annual plant * Annual report * Annual giving * Annual, Morocco, a settlement in northeastern Morocco * Annuals (b ...

herb producing a short, bristly, multi-branched stem tangled into a mat no more than 10 centimeters tall. It grows from a red

taproot A taproot is a large, central, and dominant root from which other roots sprout laterally. Typically a taproot is somewhat straight and very thick, is tapering in shape, and grows directly downward. In some plants, such as the carrot, the taproo ...

which dries purple. The leaves are up to 1.5 centimeters long, linear to widely lance-shaped, and densely hairy to bristly. 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 a length of developing fruits with a dense cluster of up to 5 flowers at the tip. The flower has a five-lobed white corolla with yellow appendages at the top of its tube. It flowers between April and August. It was first published in Bull. Torrey Bot. Club vol.36 on page 677 in 1909. The Latin

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 ...

''circumscissa'' is derived from the Latin for "cut around" because the upper half of the fruiting calyx falls away when the nutlets are ripe. It has 3 known variants; * ''Greeneocharis circumscissa'' var. ''circumscissa'' * ''Greeneocharis circumscissa'' var. ''hispida'' * ''Greeneocharis circumscissa'' var. ''rosulata''

References

External links

Jepson Manual TreatmentUSDA Plants ProfilePhoto gallery
Boraginaceae Plants described in 1909 Flora of the Northwestern United States Flora of the Southwestern United States {{Asterid-stub