Howell's wild buckwheat

Herbs, erect to spreading, annual, 0.5-3 dm, glandular, greenish or reddish green. Stems: caudex absent; aerial flowering stems erect, solid, not fistulose, 0.3-1 dm, glandular. Leaves basal; petiole 0.5-4 cm, glabrous or sparsely pilose; blade broadly elliptic to oval, 0.7-2.5 × 0.7-2.5 cm, pilose-hirsutulous, rarely slightly glandular and green on both surfaces, margins entire. Inflorescences cymose, open, spreading, 5-25 × 5-35 cm; branches not fistulose, glandular; bracts 3, scalelike, 1-2 × 0.5-1.5(-2) mm. Peduncles absent or ascending to erect, straight or curved, slender, 0.2-0.5 cm at proximal nodes, 0.01-0.1 cm distally, proximal 1/ 2 sparsely glandular. Involucres turbinate-campanulate, 1.3-2 × 1-2 mm, glabrous; teeth (4-)5, erect, 0.5-0.8 mm. Flowers 1-1.5(-2) mm; perianth yellow with reddish midribs to entirely reddish, densely pilose; tepals monomorphic, lanceolate; stamens exserted, 1-1.5 mm; filaments glabrous. Achenes dull brown, 3-gonous, 1.5-1.8 mm, glabrous.

Flowering Jun-Sep. Sandy to gravelly, often volcanic slopes, saltbush, greasewood, and sagebrush commun-ities, pinyon-juniper woodlands; (700-)1200-2100 m; Nev., Utah.

Eriogonum howellianum is encountered infrequently in widely scattered locations in southern Nevada (Clark, Lincoln, Nye, and White Pine counties) and west-central Utah (Juab, Millard, and Tooele counties). A disjunct population occurs on Pilot Peak in extreme eastern Elko County, Nevada. This species is rarely common. The name E. glandulosum was long misapplied to these plants.