Kansas Wildflowers and Grasses

WESTERN STICKSEED

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Lappula redowskii (Hornem. ) Greene

[=Lappula texana (Scheele ) Britton]

Barber County, Kansas

Annual

Height: 4-18 inches

Family: Boraginaceae - Borage Family

Flowering Period: May, June, July

Stems:

Ascending to erect, branched. Plants pubescent to strigose.

Leaves:

Alternate, sessile; blade linear to linear-oblanceolate or elliptic, 4/5 to 3 inches long, 1/12 to 1/5 inch wide, margins entire.

Inflorescences:

Scorpioid racemes, terminal.

Flowers:

Sepals connate at base, calyx 1/12 to 1/8 inch, lobes 5, narrowly elliptic to linear; corolla white to light blue, funnelform, 1/8 to 1/7 inch, fornices present, 5-lobed, lobes spreading, apex rounded; stamens 5, included; ovary 4-locular, deeply 4-lobed; style borne on gynobase (enlargement of the receptacle bearing the ovary), arising between lobes of ovary, included, undivided.

Fruits:

Schizocarps; nutlets 4, brown, ovoid, 1/10 to 1/8 inch, tuberculate, attached to gynobase along most of their length along adaxial keel, not grooved adaxially, margins with 1 or 2 rows of bristles, which are sometimes basally confluent to form wing-like or cup-like border along margins.

Habitat:

Open, dry, sandy to silty mixed-grass, shortgrass, sand, and sandsage prairies

Distribution:

Principally west 4/5 of Kansas

Origin:

Native

Comments:

Plants with the marginal bristles of the nutlet faces essentially separate and their bases not forming a definite cup are var. redowskii; those with marginal bristles obviously confluent and forming a definite cup or crown on the nutlet faces are var. cupulata (A. Gray) M.E. Jones. Named for Russian botanist D. Redowsky. Lappula, little bur.

Western stickseed