Niles's wild buckwheat

Shrubs, 3-12 × 4-23 dm. Leaves cauline 2 or more length of flowering stem; petiole 0.3-1.5 cm; blade elliptic to oblong, 0.8-2.5(-3) × 0.4-0.8 cm, white-lanate to densely white-tomentose abaxially, silvery-floccose adax-ially. Inflorescences 2-20 cm; branches floccose. Involucres 1.5-2 × 1-1.5 mm. Flowers 2-3 mm; perianth yellow to pale yellow or, rarely, white, glabrous.

Flowering Aug-Nov. Sandy to gravelly or gypsum flats and washes, saltbush communities; 200-900 m; Nev., Utah.

Variety nilesii is a plant of the Mojave Desert, known for certain only from the Las Vegas and Muddy Mountains region of Clark County, Nevada. A collection from the flood plain of the Paria River in Kane County, Utah, is tentatively assigned to this variety.