Plant Name
Scientific Name: Schistophragma intermedia
Synonym: Conobea intermedia
Common Name: Harlequin Spiralseed
Plant Characteristics
Duration: Annual
Growth Habit: Herb/Forb
Arizona Native Status: Native
Habitat: Upland. This plant grows in gravelly soil on sunny slopes and flats and in dry washes in upper elevation desert transition areas, grasslands, and oak-juniper woodlands.
Flower Color: Violet
Flowering Season: Summer, Early fall. These small, easily overlooked wildflowers bloom after the summer monsoon rains have begun.
Height: Up to 6 inches (15 cm) tall
Description: The small flowers emerge from the leaf axils on very short stalks and are tubular with a yellow throat and 2-lipped with a 2-lobed upper lip and a larger, 3-lobed lower lip lined with dark purple. The flowers are followed by short, plump, bean pod-like, point-tipped, longitudinally opening seed capsules containing numerous spirally-ribbed seeds. The leaves are plump, green, glandular hairy, opposite, and deeply pinnately lobed with 3 or 5 round-tipped main lobes. The stems are reddish, glandular-hairy, branching, and erect to spreading.
Classification
Kingdom: Plantae – Plants
Subkingdom: Tracheobionta – Vascular plants
Superdivision: Spermatophyta – Seed plants
Division: Magnoliophyta – Flowering plants
Class: Magnoliopsida – Dicotyledons
Subclass: Asteridae
Order: Scrophulariales
Family: Scrophulariaceae – Figwort family
Genus: Schistophragma Benth. ex Endl. – schistophragma
Species: Schistophragma intermedia (A. Gray) Pennell – harlequin spiralseed
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