Sphaeralcea reflexa Fryxell, Valdés-Reyna & Villarreal
Descripción
Subshrub 20-50 cm tall, the stems freely branching, densely or sparsely pubescent, the hairs stellate, white or yellow, more or less appressed. Stipules 2-4 mm long, subulate, caducous; petioles 3-13 mm long, with pubescence like stem; leaf blades ovate or ovate-oblong, sometimes with tendency to basal lobing (subhastate), 1.5-5.0 cm long, 0.8-2.0 cm wide (1.5-3.0 times as long as wide), basally truncate to cuneate, irregularly crenate-dentate, acute to obtuse, palmately 3-5-veined, essentially concolorous, with scattered white stellate hairs on both surfaces (denser abaxially), the principal veins raised and pubescent abaxially, sunken and glabrous adaxially. Flowers in axillary cymes of two flowers usually reduced to one or on short lateral branches, sometimes forming a terminal few-flowered racemiform inflorescence; pedicels slender, articulated 2-3 mm below the calyx, the buds nodding, the flower presented horizontally at anthesis; involucellar bracts 2-3 mm long, subulate, usually caducous prior to an- thesis; calyx 6-8 mm long, evenly stellate-pubescent; petals 1 cm long, fully reflexed, bicolored (the claw pallid drying greenish yellow, the blade orange drying reddish), glabrous except prominently bearded in a ring at juncture of petals with staminal column, the hairs white, 1.0-1.5 mm long, erect; staminal column 6 mm long, pallid, sparsely stellate-pubescent, with 40 or more pallid anthers borne in a globose head on filaments 1.0-1.5 mm long; styles 13-15, slender, ultimately exserted, purplish, the stigmas capitate. Fruits schizocarpic, subglobose, 6-8 mm diameter, stellate-pubescent; mericarps 5 mm long, 13-15, the lateral walls reticulate basally (the areolae transparent), smooth apically, the lower (reticulate) portion less than one fourth of mericarp, slightly narrower than upper part, indehiscent, the upper portion fully dehiscent; seeds 1 or 2(?) per mericarp, 1.8-2.0 mm long, blackish, minutely puberulent.A
Elevación
1130 – 1800 mA
Ecología y Hábitat
Low shrub in arroyo beds and along banks, with Brickellia laciniata, Brickellia coulteri, Acacia crassifolia and Larrea tridentata, Acacia berlandieri, Acacia crassifolia, Lindleya mespiloides and Cercocarpus mojadensis.A
Tipo de vegetación
Matorral de otro tipoA
Categoría IUCN
No incluidaB
Categoría NOM-059-SEMARNAT-2010
No incluidaC