WILDFLOWERS OF NEW MEXICO

Widespread and common, this low, bushy plant with a clump of 2–10-inch tall, white-woolly, hairy stems and leaves, adds color to barren soils with a dense cover of lemon-yellow blooms. Individual stems may have a woody base at the root crown and are usually unbranched. Note the 4 spreading petals and tiny, egg-shaped pods are hairless. Physaria were formerly called Lesquerella.

FLOWER: April–September. Rounded clusters of 1/2-inch (12 mm) wide flowers on the stem tips have 4 rounded petals usually with red markings in the throat. The 3/16–5/16-inch (4–8 mm) long egg-shaped pods are hairless, not notched at the tip, and pop if stepped on when dry. The pod stems usually are straight to slightly curved, 3/8–3/4-inch (10–20 mm) long.

LEAVES: Basal and alternate on stem, both with surfaces densely covered with silvery-gray hair. Basal leaves, linear to elliptic, are 3/8–1 1/2-inch (1–4 cm) long. Stem leaves, linear to lance-shaped, reach 1/8–1-inch (3-25 mm) long. 

HABITAT: Sandy, rocky soils, rangeland, disturbed areas; plains, desert grasslands and scrub, pinyon-juniper woodlands.

ELEVATION: 4,000–7,700 feet.

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

SIMILAR SPECIES: The look-alike annual Gordon’s Bladderpod, P. gordonii, widespread in southern 1/2 NM, usually has branching stems and either straight of S-shaped (not curved) pod stems, but can't be reliably separated for P. fendleri in the field without analyzing microscopic hair differences (use 10x lens). Fendler’s has star-shaped hairs fused at the middle; Gordon’s has star-shaped hairs fused at the base. White Mountain Bladderpod, P. pinetorum, is a sprawling to erect foothill to mountain species.

NM COUNTIES: Nearly statewide at low- to mid-elevation, dry habitats: Bernalillo, Chaves, Cibola, Colfax, Curry, De Baca, Dona Ana, Eddy, Grant, Guadalupe, Hidalgo, Lea, Lincoln, Los Alamos, Luna, McKinley, Otero, Quay, Rio Arriba, Roosevelt, San Juan, San Miguel, Sandoval, Santa Fe, Sierra, Socorro, Torrance, Valencia.