Plains Flax Flower Plains Flax Leaves Plains Flax Plant

Wildflowers of Southern Arizona


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Plains Flax.
Linum puberulum.
Flax (Linaceae) family.

It is a downy-haired perennial herb producing an erect, branching stem lined with glandular linear leaves up to about 1 centimeter long. The inflorescence is a wide open cyme of golden yellow to yellow-orange flowers each with five petals 1 to 1.5 centimeters in length. The fruit is a capsule about 4 millimeters wide. It grows in dry, open habitat including desert, semi-desert, hills and low mountains.

This very dainty flax is easily overlooked because its leaves and stems are so narrow and grass-like and because its copper-yellow flowers blend so with the soil. Once you have spotted one plant be sure to look around for many more within a radius of ten or twenty feet.

Although this is primarily a spring blooming annual, when moisture is right and fall weather is mild, seeds will germinate and plants will bloom into October and even November, but they will probably be quite diminutive, about two inches tall.

Be forewarned: the petals of this plant are so delicately attached that the least bump often causes them to fall.



Rincon Mountains Foothills
Location: At Gabe Zimmerman Trail Head on Arizona Trail near Vail.
4/2/16

See SEINet Pictures and Description

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