Leachlobe Cyphomeris (Cyphomeris crassifolia)

Overview of plant, near San Miguel, Coahuila, Mexico. Photograph by Wynn Anderson.

 

Foliage (left) and viscid stem ring with captured insect parts. Near San Miguel, Coahuila, Mexico. Photographs by Wynn Anderson.

 

Cleistogamous flowers (left) and fruit. Near San Miguel, Coahuila, Mexico. Photographs by Wynn Anderson.

• Common English Names: Leachlobe Cyphomeris
• Common Spanish Names: None known
• Scientific Name: Cyphomeris crassifolia (sigh-FOH-mer-iss cras-ih-FOL-lee-uh)
• Family: Nyctaginaceae (Four-O'clock Family)
• Geographic Range: Silty flats to rocky slopes and along arroyo drainages in arid or semi-arid scrub from southern Texas, Tamaulipas, eastern Coahuila, Nuevo León to San Luis Potosí, Mexico.
• Description: Herbaceous perennial with brittle, ascending to short clamoring stems, usually finely pubescent, rhombic to broadly oblong leaves with undulate margins, sometimes displaying uncrowded racemes of pendant, pale to deep pink or reddish-violet chasmogamous flowers in moist conditions but commonly producing only closed cleistogamous flowers in hot and dry soils. Fruit from either form, however, is distinctively pendant and curiously club-like with a shallow bend in the thickened (gibbous) middle of a usually warty pod.
• Notes: A distinctive, viscid, sticky, mucilaginous ring encircles the stem below the inflorescence of this and other members of the Four O'clock family. The purpose of this feature is unknown but it often traps and holds small insects as well as dust and tiny particles of wind-blown debris and may be a means of providing additional nutrients of some form at flowering time.

Last Update: 7 Oct 2013