Ceanothus cuneatus |
Ceanothus griseus |
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buck brush, common buckbrush, narrow-leaf buckthorn, sedge-leaf buckthorn, wedgeleaf cuneatus |
Carmel ceanothus |
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Habit | Shrubs, 0.5–3.5 m. Stems erect, ascending, or spreading, not rooting at nodes; branchlets grayish brown to brown, rigid or flexible, glabrate, puberulent, or tomentulose, hairs straight. | Shrubs, sometimes arborescent, evergreen, 0.5–4 m. Stems erect, ascending to arcuate, rarely prostrate, not rooting at nodes; branchlets green, not thorn-tipped, angled in cross section, flexible, sparsely puberulent or glabrous. | ||||||||||||
Leaves | usually both fascicled and not fascicled on same plant, rarely none fascicled; petiole 1–3 mm; blade flat to cupped, elliptic, oblanceolate, obovate, or orbiculate, 4–22(–30) × 3–12(–22) mm, base rounded, margins thick, not revolute, entire or denticulate distal to middle, teeth 0–9, apex obtuse, rounded, truncate, or retuse, abaxial surface pale green, glabrate or glabrous, adaxial surface green, glabrous. |
petiole 5–10 mm; blade flat to cupped, ovate to suborbiculate, 10–45 × 10–30 mm, base obtuse to rounded, margins denticulate, ± revolute, teeth 21–45, apex obtuse to rounded, abaxial surface pale green, puberulent to densely villosulous, veins prominently raised, puberulent to villosulous, adaxial surface dark green, glabrate; 3-veined from base. |
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Inflorescences | axillary or terminal, 0.8–2.5 cm. |
axillary, paniclelike, 2–7 cm. |
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Flowers | sepals, petals, and nectary white to lavender or blue. |
sepals, petals, and nectary blue. |
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Capsules | 4–6 mm wide, weakly lobed; valves smooth, horns subapical, prominent, erect, intermediate ridges absent. |
3–4 mm wide, weakly lobed at apex; valves smooth, viscid, not crested. |
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Ceanothus cuneatus |
Ceanothus griseus |
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Phenology | Flowering Mar–Jun. | |||||||||||||
Habitat | Sandy or rocky flats and slopes, maritime chaparral, open sites in pine and cypress forests. | |||||||||||||
Elevation | 10–200 m. (0–700 ft.) | |||||||||||||
Distribution |
CA; OR; nw Mexico
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CA |
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Discussion | Varieties 4 (4 in the flora). (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Ceanothus griseus is distributed along the coast from Mendocino County south to Santa Barbara County. Plants with incompletely revolute leaf margins and abaxial surfaces intermediate or similar to those of C. thyrsiflorus are encountered frequently. Whether this pattern is a result of primary or secondary intergradation is not known. Prostrate plants with wide elliptic leaves have been called C. griseus var. horizontalis McMinn; they retain their stature under cultivation. Putative hybrids with C. dentatus have been named C. ×lobbianus Hooker (M. Van Rensselaer and H. McMinn 1942). Ceanothus ×veitchianus Hooker is a rare intersubgeneric hybrid between C. griseus and C. rigidus, first collected by William Lobb near Monterey in 1853, that is cultivated in Great Britain as an ornamental. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
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Key |
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Source | FNA vol. 12, p. 99. | FNA vol. 12, p. 91. | ||||||||||||
Parent taxa | Rhamnaceae > Ceanothus > subg. Cerastes | Rhamnaceae > Ceanothus > subg. Ceanothus | ||||||||||||
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Subordinate taxa | ||||||||||||||
Synonyms | Rhamnus cuneata | C. thyrsiflorus var. griseus, C. griseus var. horizontalis | ||||||||||||
Name authority | (Hooker) Nuttall: in J. Torrey and A. Gray, Fl. N. Amer. 1: 267. (1838) | (Trelease) McMinn: in M. van Rensselaer and H. McMinn, Ceanothus, 210. (1942) | ||||||||||||
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