Tetradymia canescens

Gray horsebrush

Family: Asteraceae · Type: shrub · Native

Gray horsebrush is a California native shrub found in the Sierra Nevada, Transverse Ranges, southern Peninsular Ranges, Great Basin, and Mojave Desert in sagebrush scrub, pinyon and juniper woodland, and conifer forest at elevations of 1,000 to 3,400 meters. Flowering from July to October, this plant produces creamy to bright yellow flowers in clusters of 3 to 6 heads, with each flower head 6 to 8 millimeters long. Growing 1 to 8 decimeters tall with unevenly tomentose stems that become nearly smooth in stripes below the nodes, it forms a distinctive silvery-green shrub. Its leaves are oblanceolate, less than 4 centimeters long, covered in a dense tomentose or silvery indumentum, with smaller clustered leaves surrounding the main branches. The fruit is 2.5 to 5 millimeters long, topped with fine white bristles 6 to 11 millimeters in length.

Habitat: Sagebrush scrub, pinyon/juniper woodland, conifer forest

Bloom period: Jul-Oct

Elevation: (700)1000-3400 m

Bioregions: CaRH, SNH, TR, s PR, GB, DMoj

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