Lepidium Lasiocarpum, Hairypod Pepperweed
Plants > Wildflowers > Brassicaceae > Lepidium Lasiocarpum
Common name:
Hairypod pepperweed
Family:
Scientific name:
Lepidium lasiocarpum
Main flower color:
Range:
From Idaho and California to Texas
Height:
Up to 12 inches
Habitat:
Washes, desert flats, roadsides, sagebrush, pinyon-juniper woodland; up to 8,500 feet
Leaves:
Alternate, oblanceolate, hairy, stalked, pinnately lobed, up to 2 inches long
Season:
February to June
Flowers of lepidium lasiocarpum are small compared to the leaves, which are dark green, covered by short, spreading hairs (as are the stems and pedicels), and pinnately lobed, the larger lobes lined by a few teeth. Leaves grow at the base, though not in a rosette, and at alternate intervals along the short stem.
The inflorescence is a vertical cluster, which elongates as it matures. Flowers have four hairy, purplish, shallowly-cupped sepals alternating with four smaller white petals (sometimes absent), and two stamens. Filaments are white, the anthers yellow. Fruits are flat discs, broadly ovate to round, of two chambers, bristly (especially along the edge), with a notch and tiny residual style at the tip.
Two subspecies are ssp wrightii, for which the hairs on the seed pods have pustular bases, and ssp lasiocarpum, which has pods with non-pustular hairs.
The inflorescence is a vertical cluster, which elongates as it matures. Flowers have four hairy, purplish, shallowly-cupped sepals alternating with four smaller white petals (sometimes absent), and two stamens. Filaments are white, the anthers yellow. Fruits are flat discs, broadly ovate to round, of two chambers, bristly (especially along the edge), with a notch and tiny residual style at the tip.
Two subspecies are ssp wrightii, for which the hairs on the seed pods have pustular bases, and ssp lasiocarpum, which has pods with non-pustular hairs.
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