WOOLLY TIDESTROMIA

TIDESTROMIA LANUGINOSA

Amaranth Family, Amaranthaceae

Annual herb

The flowers are not showy, but you cannot help noticing this fuzzy door-mat of a plant. A tangle of branching, prostrate, hairy, reddish stems creates a mat 4–20 inches wide and up to ankle high. Note the small, densely woolly, gray-green leaves and tiny yellow flowers.

FLOWERS: Any time of year. Clusters have 1–3 tiny, yellow flowers with leafy bracts. The 5 petal-like tepals are less than 1/8 inch long (3 mm) and wide.

LEAVES: Opposite. Densely woolly, gray-green hairs cover the oval to lance-shaped, fleshy leaves. Leaf stems (petioles) reach 1 inch long (25 mm) and blades are 1/4–1 1/8 inches long and wide (7–30 mm), with rounded base and tip.

HABITAT: Gravelly, sandy soils, roadsides, disturbed areas; desert grasslands and scrub, piñon-juniper woodlands.

ELEVATION: 3,200–6,800 feet.

RANGE: AZ, CA,CO, NE, NM, OK, TX.

SIMILAR SPECIES: Shrubby Honeysweet, T. suffruticosa, in Doña Ana, Luna, and Otero Cos. has stout, erect stems to 2 feet tall. The mat-forming Hairy Crinklemat, Tiquila hispidissima, and other Crinklemats, have woody stems and pinkish flowers. Small Matweed, Guilleminea densa, has clusters of tiny white flowers in the leaf axils, woolly stems, and leaves hairless on the top and woolly underneath.

NM COUNTIES: Widespread except NE quarter of NM in low- to mid-elevation, arid habitats: Bernalillo, Catron, Chaves, Cibola, De Baca, Doña Ana, Hidalgo, Eddy, Grant, Guadalupe, Lea, Lincoln, Los Alamos, Luna, Otero, Quay, Rio Arriba, Roosevelt, San Juan, Sandoval, Santa Fe, Sierra, Socorro, Torrance, Valencia.