About Stephanomeria pauciflora (Torr.) A.Nelson
Stephanomeria pauciflora (Torr.) A.Nelson is a species of flowering plant in the aster family, with common names including brownplume wirelettuce, few-flowered wirelettuce, and prairie skeletonplant. This plant is native to the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, where it grows in a wide range of habitat types, including many desert areas, woodlands, and plains. It grows as a perennial herb or bushy subshrub, producing one or more sturdy, stiff stems that bear many spreading branches, and takes on a rounded but overall vertical growth form. Most of its leaves are basal and ephemeral, while smaller, scale-like leaves grow on the upper portion of the stem. Flower heads develop at intervals along the mostly bare stems, particularly near the stem tips. Each flower head has a cylindrical base covered in hairless phyllaries, and holds 3 to 6 florets. Each floret contains an elongated tube and a flat pink ligule. The fruit produced by this plant is an achene, tipped with a spreading cluster of plumelike pappus bristles. These bristles are usually brownish, but are occasionally white. The specific epithet pauciflora comes from the Latin term meaning 'few flowered'.
