Sabulina californica

California sandwort

Family: Caryophyllaceae · Type: annual · Native

California sandwort is a native annual found in northwestern California, the Cascade Range, Sierra Nevada, central Sierra Nevada, Sacramento Valley, and central western California in gravelly, sandy slopes, grassy ridges, and chaparral habitats at elevations below 1,500 meters. Flowering from spring to summer, this delicate plant produces small white flowers with petals slightly shorter than its broadly lanceolate sepals. Growing with widely spreading to erect stems 2 to 12 centimeters tall, it forms a slender, thread-like taproot with green, flexible stems. Its leaves are tiny and linear, measuring 2 to 5 millimeters long and less than 1.5 millimeters wide, arranged evenly along the stem without axillary leaves. The tiny seeds are reddish-brown, with a distinctively thick margin measuring just 0.4 to 0.5 millimeters long.

Habitat: Gravelly, sandy slopes, grassy ridges, chaparral, serpentine or not

Bloom period: Spring-summer

Elevation: < 1500 m

Bioregions: NW, CaR, SNF, c SNH, ScV, CW

California counties: Mendocino, Lake, Tulare, Orange, Butte, Fresno, Kern, Mariposa, Monterey, Napa, Placer, Sacramento, San Luis Obispo, Santa Cruz, Shasta, Sonoma, Sutter, Tehama, Yolo, El Dorado, Los Angeles, Alameda, Amador, Calaveras, Del Norte, Marin, Yuba, Nevada, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Stanislaus, Tuolumne, San Joaquin, Merced, Humboldt, Contra Costa, Solano, Trinity, Madera, Ventura

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