Habit: Annual [perennial herb], +- fleshy, +- glabrous or glaucous.
Stem: several to many, prostrate to ascending [erect], 3--45 cm.
Leaf: simple, alternate; blade linear to spoon-shaped, flat [cylindric].
Inflorescence: raceme or panicle; bracts leaf-like [or scarious].
Flower: sepals 2, overlapped, persistent in fruit; petals (3)5(7), +- pink-purple (white); stamens 3--15; stigmas 3.
Fruit: 3-valved.
Seed: 6--many, ovate to +- elliptic, generally black, smooth, finely tubercled, or with fine, net-like pattern.
Species In Genus: 14 species: western America.
Etymology: (J.L. Calandrini, Swiss scientist, 1703--1758)
Note: Other taxa in TJM (1993) moved to
Cistanthe; number of species (150) indicated in TJM (1993) and TJM2 (2012) should have been much smaller.
Calandrinia menziesii added, as segregated from
Calandrinia ciliata, which as newly circumscribed does not occur in CA and therefore has been removed.
Jepson eFlora Author: C. Matt Guilliams & John M. Miller
Reference: Hershkovitz 2006 Gayana Bot 63:13--74; Kelley 2003 FNANM 4:459--460
Unabridged Reference: Ford 1992 Ph.D. Dissertation, Univ of Washington; Hershkovitz 1991 Phytologia 70:209--225; Hershkovitz 1993 Ann Missouri Bot Gard 80:333--365, 366--396; Kelley 1973 M.S. Thesis, CA State Univ, NorthridgeIndex of California Plant Names (ICPN; linked via the Jepson Online Interchange)Key to Calandrinia
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