''Eriodictyon altissimum'' is a rare species of flowering plant in the

borage family Boraginaceae, the borage or forget-me-not family, includes about 2,000 species of shrubs, trees, and herbs in 146 to 154 genera with a worldwide distribution. The APG IV system from 2016 classifies the Boraginaceae as single family of the order ...

known by the common name Indian Knob mountainbalm. It is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...

San Luis Obispo County, California San Luis Obispo County (), officially the County of San Luis Obispo, is a County (United States), county on the Central Coast of California. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 282,424. The county seat is San Luis Obispo ...

, where it is known from only about six occurrences in the

Irish Hills Irish Hills is an area of land located roughly in southeastern Jackson County and northwest Lenawee County in Southeast Michigan. It was named after the numerous Irish immigrants who settled there from 1830 until 1850. Today it is known thr ...

on the coast and nearby Indian Knob.

Description

This is a

shrub A shrub or bush is a small to medium-sized perennial woody plant. Unlike herbaceous plants, shrubs have persistent woody stems above the ground. Shrubs can be either deciduous or evergreen. They are distinguished from trees by their multiple ...

growing erect to a maximum height of nearly 4 meters. It has shreddy bark on its larger branches and stems and a sticky exudate on its smaller twigs. The narrow, linear leaves are up to 9 centimeters long, white-hairy on the undersides and hairless and sticky on top. The

inflorescence In botany, an inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a plant's Plant stem, stem that is composed of a main branch or a system of branches. An inflorescence is categorized on the basis of the arrangement of flowers on a mai ...

is a curled cluster of bell-shaped lavender flowers, each just over a centimeter long. The fruit is a small capsule containing many tiny seeds.

Conservation

It grows in scrub, oak woodland, and

chaparral Chaparral ( ) is a shrubland plant plant community, community found primarily in California, southern Oregon, and northern Baja California. It is shaped by a Mediterranean climate (mild wet winters and hot dry summers) and infrequent, high-intens ...

habitats on

sandstone Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...

soils. When the plant was federally listed as an

endangered species An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching, inv ...

in 1994, fewer than 600 individuals were known to remain.USFWS. (1994)
Endangered or Threatened Status for Five Plants and the Morro Shoulderband Snail From Western San Luis Obispo County, California.
Federal Register. This plant sometimes occurs with the threatened endemic Morro manzanita (''Arctostaphylos morroensis''). There are occurrences on protected land within

Montaña de Oro State Park Montaña de Oro ("Mountain of Gold" in Spanish) is a state park in Central Coastal California, six miles southwest of Morro Bay and two miles south of Los Osos. It consists of 8,000 acres (32 km2) of cliffs, seven miles of shoreline, sand ...

and the Morro Dunes Ecological Reserve.USFWS
''Eriodictyon altissiumum'' Five-year Review.
February 2009. When the plant was listed as an endangered species, the main threat to its survival was

habitat destruction Habitat destruction (also termed habitat loss or habitat reduction) occurs when a natural habitat is no longer able to support its native species. The organisms once living there have either moved elsewhere, or are dead, leading to a decrease ...

; by 2009, enough of the plants were located on protected land that this is no longer considered a major threat. For this reason, the

United States Fish and Wildlife Service The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS or FWS) is a List of federal agencies in the United States, U.S. federal government agency within the United States Department of the Interior which oversees the management of fish, wildlife, ...

has recommended that the species be downlisted to threatened status.

References

External links

Calflora Database: ''Eriodictyon altissimum'' (Indian knob mountainbalm)Jepson eFlora (TJM2) treatment of ''Eriodictyon altissimum''UC CalPhotos gallery
altissimum Endemic flora of California * Natural history of the California chaparral and woodlands Natural history of San Luis Obispo County, California Plants described in 1962 {{Hydrophylloideae-stub