Psilocarphus tenellus

Slender woolly-marbles

Family: Asteraceae · Type: annual · Native

Slender woolly-marbles is a California native annual found in the Central West Coast, Central Coast Ranges, San Francisco Bay Area, and Central California coastal valleys on dry, seasonally moist slopes and flats at elevations below 2,400 meters. Flowering from March to July, this plant produces pale green to gray flowers in compact heads 3 to 5.5 millimeters in diameter. Growing with multiple stems 1 to 10 centimeters tall, the plant appears cobwebby to silky-textured with internodes generally 1 to 2 times the leaf length. Its leaves are spoon-shaped to obovate, typically 6 to 15 millimeters long and 2 to 5 times longer than their width, with distal leaves spreading. The fruit is small, approximately 0.7 to 1.2 millimeters long and club-shaped.

Habitat: Common. Dry, seasonally moist slopes, flats, burns, trails, rarely vernal pools

Bloom period: Mar-Jul

Elevation: < 2400 m

Bioregions: CA-FP (exc e SNH, Teh, SnBr, e PR, SnJt)

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