Widespread but generally overlooked, this 8–16-inch wide, mat-forming plant has prostrate woody, hairy-bristly stems, tiny pink flowers, and tiny green, bristly, clustered leaves.

FLOWERS: May–August. Flowers stemless in leaf axils; pink, funnel-shaped, 5/16-inch long (7.5 mm); 5 rounded, spreading lobes, each 1/8-inch wide (3 mm); stamens and style inside throat.

LEAVES: Clustered on short branchlets along stems. Blades linear, plump, to 3/8-inch long (1 cm), surfaces green, hairless, but with scattered bristles.

HABITAT: Favors gypsum-based, gravelly soils, flats, hills, roadsides; desert grasslands and scrub.

ELEVATION: 3,000–6,000 feet.

RANGE: NM, TX.

SIMILAR SPECIES: Woody Crinklemat, T. canescens, in much the same range, has leaves densely covered with elliptical, densely-woolly, grayish leaves, and pink to white flowers. Plume Crinklemat, T. greggii, in Dona Ana, Eddy, and Otero cos., has elliptical, densely-woolly, grayish leaves and feathery, plume-like seed heads (see photo). The gray-green, mat-forming Woolly Tidestromia, Tidestromia lanuginosa, in much the same range, has fleshy stems, hairy leaves, and tiny, yellow flowers.

NM COUNTIES: Widespread in southern NM, scattered elsewhere, in low- to mid-elevation arid, gypseous habitats: Chaves, Cibola, De Baca, Dona Ana, Eddy, Hidalgo, Lincoln, Otero, Sandoval, Guadalupe, Sierra, Socorro, Torrance.