Ramshaw Meadows Sand Verbena

Plants perennial. Stems prostrate, well branched, forming small mats, elongate, viscid-pubescent. Leaves: petiole 1-2 cm; blade orbiculate-oval, 0.4-1 × 0.3-0.5 cm, margins entire, plane, surfaces glandular-pubescent. Inflorescences: peduncle shorter than subtending petiole; bracts lanceolate to ovate, 2-3 × 1-2 mm, papery, glandular-pubescent; flowers 1-5. Perianth: tube whitish, 10-18 mm, limb white to lavender-pink, 6-8 mm diam. Fruits narrowly obovate in profile, 3-4 × 2-3 mm, thin, coriaceous, apex broadly conic; wings absent or 5-angled.

Calif.

Flowering summer.

Sandy soils, alpine meadows; of conservation concern; 2600-3000m.

Abronia alpina Brand. Bot. Gaz. 27: 456. 1899
Annual, much branched, the branches prostrate, forming mats 2 dm. or less in diameter, viscid-puberulent or short-villous; petioles slender, 1-2 cm. long, shortvillous ; leaf -blades orbicular or rounded-oval, 4-9 mm. long and of about the same breadth, entire, viscid-puberulent; peduncles slender, 5-6 mm. long, viscid-puberulent; bracts lance-ovate, 2-3 mm. long, attenuate; heads 3-5-rlowered; perianth 12-15 mm. long, white or pink, viscidly short-villous outside, the limb 8 mm. wide or less; fruit 3-4 mm. long, narrowed to each end, obtusely or acutely angled, reticulate-veined, puberulent.
Type locality: Monatchy Meadows of Mount Whitney, California, at an elevation of 2100
to 2400 meters. . , _.. . ~ ...
Distribution: Sandy meadows m the southern Sierra Nevada, Calilorma.

Abronia alpina is a rare species of flowering plant in the four o'clock family known by the common names Ramshaw Meadows sand verbena and Ramshaw Meadows abronia. It is endemic to Tulare County, California, where it is known from only one area high in the Sierra Nevada.