Blushing wild buckwheat

Plants 1.5-2.5 × (1.5-)2-8(-12) dm. Aerial flowering stems 0.4-2 dm, thinly tomentose to floccose. Leaves: petiole 0.5-1.5 cm; blade elliptic, 0.7-2(-2.2) × 0.4-1(-1.2) cm, densely white-tomentose abaxially, sparsely floccose or glabrous and green adaxially. Inflorescences thinly tomentose; proximal bracts 4-6, lanceolate to narrowly elliptic, 1-2 × 0.25-0.6 cm, distal bracts semileaflike, midway along branch, linear to narrowly lanceolate, 0.7-1 × 0.1-0.25 cm. Involucres turbinate to turbinate-campanulate, 5-8 × 3-4 mm. Flowers 5-7 mm at anthesis, 6.5-9 mm in fruit; perianth cream, rarely yellow, becoming suffused with blush of pinkish red to maroon. Achenes (5-)5.5-8 mm.

Flowering Jun-Sep. Gravelly metavolcanic soils in montane chaparral, conifer and mountain mahogany communities; 1600-1900 m; Calif.

Variety erubescens is localized and rare, known only from the eastern Scott Bar Mountains west of Yreka in Siskiyou County, and Trinity Mountain, Trinity County. Technically, the three bracts along the “branchlet” terminate a branch, and a peduncle extends from the whorl of bracts to the base of the involucre.