Douglas' Buckwheat

Herbs, matted, occasionally polygamodioecious, 0.4-1.5 × 0.5-6 dm, thinly tomentose to glabrate. Stems: caudex spread-ing; aerial flowering stems erect or nearly so, slender, solid, not fistulose, arising at nodes of caudex branches and at distal nodes of short, nonflowering aerial branches, 0.4-1.2 dm, with a whorl of 4-8 leaflike bracts ca. midlength, similar to leaf blades, 0.3-1.5 × 0.1-0.3 cm. Leaves in basal rosettes; petiole 0.05-0.5(-1) cm, tomentose; blade oblanceolate or elliptic to spatulate, 0.4-1.5(-1.9) × 0.1-0.5 cm, lanate on both surfaces, or tomentose abaxially and slightly less so and greenish adaxially, margins entire, plane. Inflorescences capitate, 0.8-1.5 cm wide; branches absent; bracts absent immediately below involucre. Involucres 1 per node, turbinate to turbinate-campanulate, 2.5-3.5 × 2-2.5 mm; teeth 6-14, lobelike, strongly reflexed, 1.5-4(-6) mm. Flowers 4-9 mm, including 0.7-2 mm stipelike base; perianth yellow, cream, or ochroleucous to rose-red, sparsely to densely villous abaxially; tepals monomorphic, obovate; stamens exserted, 4-6 mm; filaments pilose proximally. Achenes light brown, 3-4.5 mm, glabrous except for pubescent beak.

Eriogonum caespitosum Nuttall subsp. douglasii (Bentham) S. Stokes

Eriogonum douglasii is a species of wild buckwheat known by the common name Douglas' buckwheat. It is native to the western United States, including the Pacific Northwest and part of the Great Basin.

This plant forms a mat of hairy herbage around a caudex. There are rosettes of lance-shaped to oval leaves with blades 0.4 to nearly 2 centimeters long. The leaves are feltlike, covered in woolly hairs. The inflorescence arises on a solid, erect flowering stem up to 15 centimeters tall with a whorl of bracts midway up. It is a headlike cluster of cream, yellow, or rose-pink flowers with protruding stamens. The flower buds are often much redder in outward appearance, even when they open to a yellow or yellow-pink flower. The very similar E. thymoides usually has more rolled back leaves that appear nearly cylindrical and with a tightly clasping involucre.

This plant grows in grassland, sagebrush, woodland, and pine forest habitat.

There are three varieties of this species, including vars. douglasii and meridionale. The rare var. elkoense (Sunflower Flat wild buckwheat) is endemic to Elko County, Nevada.

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