Red Cyphomeris (Cyphomeris gypsophiloides)

Cleistogamous flowers of Red Cyphomeris (Cyphomeris gypsophiloides), Chihuahuan Desert Gardens. Photograph by Wynn Anderson.

• Common English Names: Red Cyphomeris
• Common Spanish Names: None known
• Scientific Name: Cyphomeris gypsophiloides (sigh-FOH-mer-iss gyp-soh-fi-LOW-ih-des)
• Family: Nyctaginaceae (Four-O'clock Family)
• Geographic Range: Disturbed gravels of arroyo drainages, rocky slopes, and desert scrub to dry oak-juniper woodlands from southern New Mexico and western Texas through Chihuahua, Durango, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to Hidalgo and Oaxaca, Mexico.
• Description: Herbaceous perennial with brittle, ascending to short clamoring stems, mostly glabrous, oblong to lanceolate or linear leaves, sometimes displaying uncrowded racemes of pendant, deep rose pink to 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 finely striated 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: 29 Sep 2013