Scarlet wild buckwheat

Eriogonum phoeniceum L. M. Shultz, Harvard Pap. Bot. 3: 49, fig. 1. 1998

Subshrubs, 0.2-0.4 × 0.6-1.2 dm. Stems: caudex absent or sometimes spreading; aerial flowering stems 0.05-0.1 dm, reddish-tomentose to floccose. Leaves: blade linear, 0.4-0.6 × 0.08-0.12 cm, densely white-tomentose abaxially, sparsely floccose and green adaxially, margins revolute. Inflorescences 0.5-1 cm; branches reddish-floccose to glabrate. Involucres 2-3 mm, floccose to subglabrous. Flowers 2-2.5 mm; perianth white to pink, rose, or red. Achenes 1.5-2 mm.

Flowering Jul-Sep. Tuffaceous ash outcrops, sagebrush communities, pinyon-juniper woodlands; 1600-2100 m; Utah.

Variety phoeniceum is known only from widely scattered populations in Juab and Millard counties of western Utah. It closely approaches var. lapidicola, and a distinction between the two is somewhat arbitrary, the leaf blades of var. phoeniceum being tightly revolute and a brighter green on the adaxial surface. Specimens of var. phoeniceum also approach specimens of the variable var. simpsonii found mainly in Emery County in eastern Utah.