''Bloomeria clevelandii'' is a rare species of flowering plant that is known by the common name San Diego goldenstar. It is native to a strip of scrub and coastal grassland in

San Diego County, California San Diego County (), officially the County of San Diego, is a county (United States), county in the southwest corner of the U.S. state of California, north to its Mexico-United States border, border with Mexico. As of the 2020 United States Cen ...

, and adjacent

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 ...

Genetic analysis Genetic analysis is the overall process of studying and researching in fields of science that involve genetics and molecular biology. There are a number of applications that are developed from this research, and these are also considered parts ...

of several morphologically similar genera shows that this species, which was named ''Muilla clevelandii'' for several decades, is not very closely related to the other members of ''

Muilla ''Muilla'' is a genus of Monocotyledon, monocots in the family Asparagaceae. It includes four to five species of flowering plants. Taxonomy The genus name is a List of taxa named by anagrams, taxonomic anagram of ''Allium'' (in fact, the letter ...

'' and is moved back to ''Bloomeria''. Its

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 ...

''clevelandii'' honors 19th-century San Diego-based plant collector and lawyer Daniel Cleveland.

Description

''Bloomeria clevelandii'' is a perennial herb growing from a

corm Corm, bulbo-tuber, or bulbotuber is a short, vertical, swollen, underground plant stem that serves as a storage organ that some plants use to survive winter or other adverse conditions such as summer drought and heat (perennation). The word ''c ...

and producing 2 to 8 narrow leaves up to 15 centimeters long. The erect

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 ...

arises from ground level and may be up to 70 centimeters tall. It is shaped like an

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 ...

with up to 30 flowers borne on

pedicels In botany, a pedicel is a stem that attaches a single flower to 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 branch ...

2 or 3 centimeters long. The flower has six green-veined yellow

tepal A tepal is one of the outer parts of a flower (collectively the perianth). The term is used when these parts cannot easily be classified as either sepals or petals. This may be because the parts of the perianth are undifferentiated (i.e. of very ...

s each up to a centimeter long. The species is threatened by the destruction of its coastal habitat to urban development and by impacts from vehicles and trash dumping.California Native Plant Society Rare Plant Profile

References

External links

Jepson Manual Treatment for ''Bloomeria clevelandii''USDA Plants Profile''Bloomeria clevelandii'' — UC Photos gallery
clevelandii Flora of California Flora of Baja California Natural history of the California chaparral and woodlands Natural history of San Diego County, California Plants described in 1885 Taxa named by Sereno Watson {{Asparagaceae-stub