''Greeneocharis circumscissa'' is a 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 cushion cryptantha. It is native to western North America from

Washington Washington most commonly refers to: * George Washington (1732–1799), the first president of the United States * Washington (state), a state in the Pacific Northwest of the United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A ...

Baja California Baja California, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California, is a state in Mexico. It is the northwesternmost of the 32 federal entities of Mexico. Before becoming a state in 1952, the area was known as the North Territory of B ...

Colorado Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...

and it is also found in

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

. It grows in sandy or gravelly types of habitat, from mountains to desert, below above sea level. Philip Alexander Munz This is an annual herb producing a short, bristly, multi-branched stem tangled into a mat no more than 10 centimeters tall. It grows from a red

taproot A taproot is a large, central, and dominant root from which other roots sprout laterally. Typically a taproot is somewhat straight and very thick, is tapering in shape, and grows directly downward. In some plants, such as the carrot, the taproot ...

which dries purple. The leaves are up to 1.5 centimeters long, linear to widely lance-shaped, and densely hairy to bristly. 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 length of developing fruits with a dense cluster of up to 5 flowers at the tip. The flower has a five-lobed white corolla with yellow appendages at the top of its tube. It flowers between April and August. It was first published in Bull. Torrey Bot. Club vol.36 on page 677 in 1909. The Latin

specific epithet In Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin gramm ...

''circumscissa'' is derived from the Latin for "cut around" because the upper half of the fruiting calyx falls away when the nutlets are ripe. It has 3 known variants; * ''Greeneocharis circumscissa'' var. ''circumscissa'' * ''Greeneocharis circumscissa'' var. ''hispida'' * ''Greeneocharis circumscissa'' var. ''rosulata''

References

External links

Jepson Manual TreatmentUSDA Plants ProfilePhoto gallery
Boraginaceae Plants described in 1909 Flora of the Northwestern United States Flora of the Southwestern United States {{Boraginaceae-stub