Chamaebatiaria millefolium

Desertsweet

Family: Rosaceae · Type: shrub · Native

Desertsweet is a native shrub found in the Klamath Ranges, Cascades, eastern Sierra Nevada, Great Basin, and northeastern desert mountains in dry, rocky sagebrush scrub, pinyon and juniper woodland, and pine forest at elevations of 900 to 3,400 meters. Flowering from June to August, this strongly aromatic shrub produces white flowers approximately 5 millimeters wide in dense panicles or racemes with 20 to 400 individual blossoms. Growing 1.2 to 2 meters tall with a densely branched, evergreen structure covered in stellate hairs, it forms a robust and textured silhouette in its arid habitats. Its distinctive leaves are complex, with odd-pinnately compound arrangement featuring 13 to 25 primary leaflets and 6 to 10 secondary leaflets that are tiny, sessile, and variably entire or toothed. The fruit develops as reddish-brown follicles 3 to 5 millimeters long, containing a few narrow, yellowish seeds.

Habitat: Dry, rocky sagebrush scrub, pinyon/juniper woodland, pine forest

Bloom period: Jun-Aug

Elevation: 900-3400 m

Bioregions: KR, CaR, SN (e slope), GB, ne DMtns

California counties: Mono, Inyo, Siskiyou, Shasta, Modoc, Lassen, Kern, Tulare, Tuolumne, Amador, El Dorado, Butte, San Bernardino

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