Southern mountain wild buckwheat

Eriogonum kennedyi subsp. austromontanum (Munz & I. M. Johnston) S. Stokes

Herbs, loosely matted, 0.8-1.5 × 1.5-3.5 dm. Leaf blades oblance-olate to elliptic, (0.4-)0.6-1(-1.2) × 0.1-0.2 cm, grayish-white-tomentose, margins not revolute. Scapes 8-15 cm, sparsely tomentose to floccose. Involucres 2.5-4 mm, tomentose. Flowers 2-3 mm. Achenes 3.5-4 mm.

Flowering Jun-Aug. Gravelly flats and slopes, sagebrush and montane conifer woodlands; 2000-2200 m; Calif.

Variety austromontanum is rare but occasionally locally common and known only from the Bear Valley area of the San Bernardino Mountains in San Bernardino County. Its rarity is due to local habitat destruction around Bear and Baldwin lakes, and to people gathering the plants for dried miniature displays for model railroads, doll houses, and Christmas decorations. It appears on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service list of threatened species. The variety is sometimes confused with E. wrightii var. subscaposum, which has a distinctly branched inflorescence. Both of these taxa can grow in mixed populations with var. kennedyi.