Draba incrassata

Sweetwater mountains draba

Family: Brassicaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Conservation status: CNPS 1B.3

Sweetwater mountains draba is a rare California native (CNPS 1B.3) perennial herb found in northern eastern Sierra Nevada in the Sweetwater Mountains of Mono County, inhabiting alpine barrens and rocky slopes at elevations of 2,500 to 3,500 meters. Flowering from June to August, this plant produces small, bright yellow flowers in compact clusters of 8 to 22 blooms, each petal 3 to 5 millimeters long. Growing as a tufted, scapose perennial with few to many unbranched stems 2 to 8 centimeters tall, it emerges from a distinctive caudex. Its basal leaves are small, 3 to 10 millimeters long, obovate to oblanceolate with entire margins and delicate ciliate edges, glabrous or bearing simple short-stalked two-rayed hairs. The fruit is a flat, glabrous ovate to lance-elliptic structure 3 to 7 millimeters long, containing 8 to 12 small oblong seeds.

Habitat: Alpine barrens, rocky slopes

Bloom period: Jun-Aug

Elevation: 2500-3500 m

Bioregions: n SNE (Sweetwater Mtns, Mono Co.).

California counties: Mono

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