California

California macrophylla (Hooker & Arnott) Aldasoro, C. Navarro, P. Vargas, L. Sáez & Aedo

Annual; stem short

Leaves cordate, renate-serrate, often shallowly lobed, somewhat glaucous, or greener with rather deeper lobes, on rather long petioles, young leaves kidney shaped.

Photo by Joe Decruyenaere This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Inflorescence: Umbels of 2-5 flowers; bracts small, narrow, pointed; buds large, round; flowers 2-3cm across, white in northern populations and pink-purple in southern populations.

Fruit: Beak 4-5cm; carpel 7mm; awn with rather short dark brown bristles; foveole small, upward facing or nil, or hidden by carpel bristles, but very flat top to carpel.

Distribution: endemic to North America; California in unsprayed open field and grassy places below 1200m.

Northern populations have rounded to slightly lobes glaucous leaves: southern populations have more deeply lobed green leaves and pink flowers. The two populations overlap roughly through the transverse range .

Remarks: has been said to have evolved in California over the last 200 years, from E. malacoides? But several characters too different: bristles on awn, foveole, and beak size. It has recently been found the genus California separated from Erodium in the Early Miocene period.

California macrophylla; Imperatrice, Jackson County, OR, US; May 1, 2017; photos: Scot Loring; from iNaturalist.org; licenced under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-NC 4.0)

California macrophylla: Ensenada, BC , Mexico; 12/04/2021; photo: Carlos Gonzalez; from iNaturalist.org; licenced under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Erodium

and California

This site was created and is maintained by Benjamin Coultrup.

Clade I, Subclade 1

Subgenus Erodium

- Section Erodium

- Section Oxyrynchia

- stephanianum group