Smallflower Starviolet

Houstonia rupicola Greenman, Proc. Am. Acad. 32: 286. 1897
Hedyotis stenophylla parviflora [no. 1J A. Gray, PI. Wright. 1:81. 1852. Houstonia fasciculata A. Gray, Syn. Fl. NAm. I 2 : 27, in part. 1884.
Erect perennial, from a woody base, the stems numerous, 4-14 cm. high, simple or branched, the branches stout, rigid, conspicuously angulate, scaberulous or glabrate; stipules minute, triangular, rigid, long-cuspidate, white-setiferous; leaves sessile, linear to narrowly oblong or elliptic-oblong, 3-15 mm. long, 2.5 mm. wide or narrower, acute, mucronate, pungent, thick and rigid, glabrous, lustrous on the upper surface, the margins ciliolate, the costa prominent beneath; flowers in small, dense, terminal and axillary cymes, the pedicels stout, less than 1 mm. long; hypanthium at anthesis less than 1 mm. long, glabrous; calyx-lobes triangular-ovate, equaling or shorter than the hypanthium, acute or obtuse, ciliolate, in fruit equaling the capsule; corolla funnelform, 5 mm. long, glabrous outside, the lobes oblong, obtuse, shorter than the tube, villous within; capsule subglobose, 1.5 mm. long and nearly as wide, half inferior, rounded or truncate at the apex, the free portion scaberulous; seeds minute, oblong, concavoconvex, peltate, scrobiculate, black.
Type locality: Crevices of rocks on the San Pedro River, Texas. (State given erroneously as Arizona in the original description.) Distribution: Western Texas.