''Cymopterus cinerarius'' is a species of flowering plant in the carrot family known by the common name gray springparsley. This small plant is native to the US states of

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

and

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a landlocked state in the Western United States. It borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the seventh-most extensive, th ...

, where it grows on the rocky talus of the

Sierra Nevada The Sierra Nevada ( ) is a mountain range in the Western United States, between the Central Valley of California and the Great Basin. The vast majority of the range lies in the state of California, although the Carson Range spur lies primari ...

. This plant has a short stem and lies against the ground or draped over rocky debris. Its distinctive leaves are only a few centimeters long and dissected into segments of a few millimeters in length. The gray-green segments are thick, pointed lobes with a bumpy textured surface and a waxy epidermal coating. From the center of this patch of leaflets sprouts an erect peduncle holding the flowers. The peduncle and the

umbel UMBEL (Upper Mapping and Binding Exchange Layer) is a logically organized knowledge graph of 34,000 concepts and entity types that can be used in information science for relating information from disparate sources to one another. It was retired ...

s of flowers are reddish-green or brown and the umbel has very large wrinkly

bract In botany, a bract is a modified or specialized leaf, associated with a reproductive structure such as a flower, inflorescence axis or cone scale. Bracts are usually different from foliage leaves in size, color, shape or texture. They also lo ...

s which are more visible than the actual white flower corolla.

External links

Jepson Manual TreatmentUSDA Plants ProfilePhoto gallery
cinerarius Flora of California Flora of Nevada Flora of the Sierra Nevada (United States) Endemic flora of the United States {{Apiaceae-stub