With fern-like foliage, white, spherical flower clusters, and round bundles of brown seed pods, this erect, 2–3-foot tall flower can’t be missed at any time of the year. Note the plant is thornless.

FLOWERS: May–September. Flowers in spherical pincushion clusters 1/2-inch diameter (12 mm) on stout stalks (peduncles) from the axils of the upper leaves; each cluster has 30–50 tiny, narrow, tubular, white flowers with showy, yellow anthers. Fruit from summer through fall is a tight, rounded bundle of curved and twisted brown pods, each 1/2–1 inch long (12–25 mm).

LEAVES: Alternate. Blade twice-pinnately compound with 16–30 leaflets, each about 1/8 inch long (2-3 mm). The leaves close-up at night, and often partially during hot, sunny days.

HABITAT: Sandy, gravelly, clay loam soils, grasslands, foothills, roadsides, wetlands; prairies, pinyon-juniper woodlands.

ELEVATION: 3,000–7,000 feet.

RANGE: NM to AL, TX to SD.

SIMILAR SPECIES: 5 species of Desmanthus in NM. Cooley’s Bundleflower, D. cooleyi (see photo), nearly statewide below 7,000 feet, is low, sprawling and with straight, unbundled seed pods.

NM COUNTIES: Scattered nearly statewide in low- to mid-elevation, open habitats: Bernalillo, Chaves, Cibola, Colfax, Curry, Dona Ana, Eddy, Guadalupe, Hidalgo, Lea, Los Alamos, Luna,  McKinley, Mora, Otero, Quay, Rio Arriba, San Miguel, Sandoval, Santa Fe, Sierra, Socorro, Torrance, Union, Valencia.