With fine, short hairs and weak stems that reach 2 feet long, this plant often tangles around and sprawls over other vegetation. Flowers with glandular-hairy buds and bracts form in clusters of 3, but bloom separately. Note the opposite, broad, heart-shaped leaves, trailing stems, and small, purplish flowers.

FLOWER: June–October. Small, 3/8 inch long (9 mm), tubular flowers have united, pink to purple petals with 5 spreading, notched lobes, and 3 stamens with yellow anthers. Sticky, glandular hairs cover the buds and bracts. Seeds are rounded, 1/8 inch long (3.5 mm), black, and smooth to weakly ribbed.

LEAVES: Opposite, on stems (petioles) to 1 3/8 inches long (35 mm). Blades are thick, broadly triangular to heart-shaped, and reach 3 inches long (8 cm); surfaces can be hairless, hairy, or glandular hairy.

HABITAT: Sandy, gravelly, loamy soils, moist areas; plains, hillsides, canyons, slopes, roadsides, disturbed areas; grasslands, pinyon-juniper woodlands, pine-oak, mixed confer forests.

ELEVATION: 5,100–9,200 feet.

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

SIMILAR SPECIES: Velvet Umbrellawort, M. albida, nearly statewide, has linear to oval leaves mostly greater than 3/8-inch (1 cm) wide and hairy seeds (use lens). Smooth Four-O’Clock,  M. glabra, scattered statewide, has hairless leaves and stems, tiny flowers, and warty seeds without hair. Mountain Four-O’Clock, M. melanoytrcha, in no. and so. mountains of NM, has erect stems with tapering-triangular leaves and purplish, hairy bracts beneath the petals.

NM COUNTIES: Widespread in NM, except eastern plains, in mid-elevation habitats: Bernalillo, Catron, Cibola, Colfax, Dona Ana, Eddy, Grant, Harding, Hidalgo, Lincoln, Los Alamos, Luna, McKinley, Mora, Otero, Rio Arriba, San Juan, San Miguel, Sandoval, Santa Fe, Sierra, Socorro, Taos, Torrance, Union.