WILDFLOWERS OF NEW MEXICO

This sprawling vine scrambles over boulders and bushes with leafy stems reaching 8-feet long. Showy little blue, purple, or pink flowers bloom from the leaf axils. Note the bilaterally symmetrical flowers with a white throat and the twining, triangular leaves.

FLOWERS: March–October. Inflated tubular flowers to 5/8-inch long (17 mm) and spreading open to 1-inch (2.5 cm) wide with 2 lips; 2 lobes on upper lip and 3 on lower lip; throat hairy, white with dark streaks, constricted by a central hump.

LEAVES: Alternate with twining petioles (stems) to 1 1/4-inches long (33 mm). Blades to 1-inch long (25 mm), triangular with variable arrowhead-like basal lobes, margin entire.

HABITAT: Sandy, gravelly soils of desert canyons, washes, riparian corridors; desert grasslands and scrub, pinyon-juniper woodlands.

ELEVATION: 4,000–7,500 feet.

RANGE: AZ, NM, TX.

SIMILAR SPECIES: The look-alike snapdragon vine, Net-cup Snapdragon Vine, Epixiphium wislizeni (Maurandya wislizeni), in similar range and habitats, has larger leaf blades 1 1/8–2-inches long (3–5 cm), and larger (to 1 1/4-inch long), solid-colored, light-blue flowers.

NM COUNTIES: Southern half of NM, scattered elsewhere, in low- to-mid elevation, riparian habitats: Bernalillo, Catron, Chaves, Dona Ana, Eddy, Grant, Guadalupe, Hidalgo, Lincoln, Luna, Otero, Roosevelt, San Juan, Sandoval, Sierra, Socorro, Valencia.