Foothill Sunburst

Plants to 30 cm. Leaves 10–30 mm, mostly 1-pinnately lobed (lobes 0.5–1.5 mm wide), distal sometimes entire. Peduncles 20–50 mm. Phyllaries ± 8, connate to ¹/2 their lengths, elliptic to lanceolate (each pair with semicircular crest proximal to sinus, hard at maturity, ± enclosing cypselae). Ray florets ± 8. Disc florets 8–25+; tubes cylindric, abruptly dilated (throats broadly funnelform), lobes glabrous. Cypselae 2–2.5 mm. 2n = 6 + 0–2I, 8 + 0–1I or 0–1B, 10 + 0–1I.

Monolopia heermannii Durand, J. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, n. s. 3: 93. 1855

Pseudobahia heermannii (Durand) Rydberg
Monolopia Heermannii Durand. Jour. Acad. Phila. II. 3: 93. 1855. Monolopia bahiaefolia pinnatifida A. Gray, Bot. Calif. 1: 383. 1876. Eriophyllum Heermannii Greene, Fl. Franc. 445. 1897.
A sparingly floccose annual; stem 1-3 dm. high, freely branching; leaves alternate, pinnatifid or bipinnatifid into linear segments, or the basal ones spatulate and toothed and the uppermost entire and linear; heads solitary at the ends ^f the branches; peduncle 1-5 cm. long; involucre floccose, 5 mm. high, 6-7 mm. broad; pr : pal bracts about 8, united below the middle, usually with thickened lobes or callosities at the sinuses; ray-flowers 8-10; ligules yellow, 5-8 mm. long; disk-corollas 2.5 mm. long, villous at the junction of the short tube and the throat; achenes oblanceolate in outline, rounded at the apex, 4-angled but decidedly compressed; pappus wanting or of a few minute squamellae.
Type locality: Calaveras, California. Distribution: California.

Pseudobahia heermannii is a species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae known by the common names foothill sunburst and brittlestem.

It is endemic to California, where it occurs in grassland, chaparral, woodlands, and other habitat in the Sierra Nevada foothills and a section of the Central Coast Ranges.

It is an annual herb growing 10 to 30 centimeters tall with a pale green to reddish woolly or cobwebby stem. The leaves are divided into several narrow, toothed lobes. The inflorescence is a solitary flower head with a small, hard, cuplike involucre of about 8 fused phyllaries. From the involucre bloom about 8 golden ray florets around a center of hairless disc florets.