Cardamine breweri

Brewer's bitter cress

Family: Brassicaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Brewer's bitter cress is a California native perennial found in northern northwestern California, high Cascade Range, Sierra Nevada, western Transverse Range, San Bernardino Mountains, Warner Mountains, and eastern Sierra Nevada in wet places and conifer forests at elevations of 400 to 3,200 meters. Flowering from June to July, this plant produces white flowers 3.5 to 6 millimeters long with delicate petals. Growing with decumbent to erect stems 15 to 60 centimeters tall, it has a slender rhizome and can be glabrous or sparsely hairy near the base. Its leaves typically have 3 to 5 leaflets, with the terminal leaflet ovate to nearly round, featuring crenate or dentate margins. The fruit develops as an erect silique 1.5 to 3.5 centimeters long, containing 14 to 28 small oblong seeds.

Habitat: Wet places, conifer forest

Bloom period: Jun-Jul

Elevation: 400-3200 m

Bioregions: n NW, CaRH, SNH, WTR, SnBr, Wrn, SNE

California counties: Inyo, Madera, Modoc, Mono, Placer, Plumas, Sierra, Tulare, San Bernardino, Fresno, Shasta, Butte, Nevada, Tuolumne, Santa Cruz, Alpine, Siskiyou, Lassen, Humboldt, El Dorado, Amador, Mendocino, Yuba, Tehama, Kern, Mariposa, Santa Barbara

Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.