Large, open clusters of small, white flowers cover the intricately branching, rounded shrub that reaches 3-feet tall and 5-feet wide. The stems are covered with woolly hair and leafy up to the flower cluster with branches that divide in pairs or threes. Note the densely hairy leaves with rounded tips.

FLOWERS: August–October. Densely woolly, paired branches have open clusters of white to cream-colored flowers 1/8-inch (3 mm) long and wide. Flowers age to pink or red, seeds brown.

LEAVES: Alternate. Blades elliptic to oval 5/8–1 1/8-inches (1.5–3 cm) long and wide, densely woolly; stems (petioles) to 5/8-inch (1.5 cm) long; margins entire, sometimes slightly scalloped, surfaces densely hairy, tips rounded.

HABITAT: Sandy, gravelly, silty, clay soils; desert shrubland, short grass prairie, pinyon-juniper to ponderosa woodlands.

ELEVATION: 3,500–7,000 feet.

RANGE: AZ, CO, NM, NV, UT WY.

SIMILAR SPECIES: 8 varieties in the western U. S. with different flower colors and leaf features. This is the common variety in NM. The infrequent var. orbiculatum has nearly round leaves. Narrow-leaf Buckwheat, E. leptophyllum, in much the same range, also a rounded subshrub with white flower clusters, has narrow leaves with the margins tightly folded under.

NM COUNTIES: Central and nw NM, scattered elsewhere, in mid-elevation, dry habitats: Bernalillo, Colfax, Los Alamos, McKinley, Quay, Rio Arriba, Roosevelt, San Juan, Sandoval, Santa Fe, Socorro, Valencia.