''Mentzelia polita'' is a species of flowering plant in the family
Loasaceae known by the common name polished blazingstar. It is native to the southwestern United States, where it grows in desert mountains, washes, and other dry habitat.
Description
It is a perennial herb producing a peeling white stem from a
caudex
A caudex (plural: caudices) of a plant is a stem, but the term is also used to mean a rootstock and particularly a basal stem structure from which new growth arises.pages 456 and 695
In the strict sense of the term, meaning a stem, "caudex" is m ...
, reaching up to about 30 centimeters in maximum height. The lance-shaped leaves are a few centimeters long and have no teeth or lobes.
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 cluster of flowers with pale yellow to nearly white petals up to 1.4 centimeters long. The fruit is a cup-shaped
utricle under a centimeter wide which contains many lens-shaped, bumpy seeds about 3 millimeters wide.
References
External links
Jepson Manual TreatmentPhoto gallery
polita
Flora of the Southwestern United States
Flora of the California desert regions
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