Gregg's Buckwheat

Eriogonum greggii just enters the flora area in Hildago and Starr counties, where it is rare. In Mexico, the plants occur in Coahuila and Nuevo León, nearly always below 1850 m. There, Gregg's wild buckwheat occasionally is found in montane conifer woodlands.

Herbs, polycarpic, 1-4 dm, glandular-puberulent; taproot not chambered. Stems: caudex absent or compact; aerial flowering stems usually 1, erect or nearly so, not fistulose, 0.5-1.5 dm, glandular-puberulent. Leaves basal and cauline; basal petiolate, petiole often winged, 0.5-2 cm, hispid, blade elliptic to broadly spatulate, 2-6(-10) × 0.5-2(-2.5) cm, hispid and uniformly stipitate-glandular on both surfaces or glabrous except for ciliate midvein and margin; cauline sessile, blades in whorls of 3-10 per node, oblanceolate, obovate, or spatulate, 0.5-4 × 0.2-1.5(-2) cm, similar to basal blade except more hispid and less glandular adaxially than abaxially, or glabrous except for ciliate midvein and margins. Inflorescences 1-3 × 1-3 dm; branches glandular-puberulent; bracts semileaflike to scalelike, 3-15 × 1-3(-5) mm. Peduncles ascending to erect, straight or slightly curving upward, 1-6(-7) cm, glandular and hispid. Involucres cam-panulate, 1.5-3 × 3-5 mm, slightly to densely strigose and glandular; teeth 1-1.5 mm. Flowers 1.5-2.5 mm in anthesis, 2.5-3.5 mm in fruit; perianth yellowish white with prominent reddish brown to brown midribs and bases, becoming more reddish in fruit, strigose abaxially; tepals lanceolate to oblong; stamens 1.5-2 mm; filaments glabrous. Achenes reddish brown, 3-4 mm, 3-ridged distally, short-beaked, glabrous. 2n = 32.

Tex.; Mexico (Coahuila, Nuevo León).

Flowering Jul-May.

Calcareous flats and slopes, mixed grassland, creosote bush, and saltbush communities; of conservation concern; 50m.

Eriogonum ciliatum Torrey ex Bentham var. foliosum Torrey