Flora of North America species comparison

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Marah fabacea

California man-root
Leaf

blades shallowly 5–7-lobed, 5–10 cm wide, surfaces not glaucous.
Flowers

sepals (pistillate) vestigial;

petals 3–5 mm (pistillate) or 1.5–2.5 mm (staminate), corolla yellowish green to cream-yellow or (especially inland) white, rotate;

staminodia absent in pistillate flowers.
Capsules

yellowish green at maturity, globose, 4–5 cm, surface sparsely to densely echinate, spinules rigid or flexible, 4–12 mm.
Seeds

1–4, oblong-ovate, ± compressed, 15–20 mm.
2n

= 32.

Marah fabacea
Phenology Flowering Feb–May.
Habitat Streamsides, washes, coastal strand, rock outcrops, cliff bases, ledges, grasslands, chaparral, oak woodlands, riparian woodlands, open hillsides, roadsides, powerline cuts
Elevation 20–1400 m (100–4600 ft)
Distribution
from FNA
CA; NV
[WildflowerSearch map]
Discussion

Marah fabacea var. fabacea was mapped by K. M. Stocking (1955b) as confined to near-coastal localities centering around San Francisco Bay, from Marin to Monterey counties; he recognized var. agrestis as the more widely distributed expression of the species. In his view, var. fabacea is characterized by fruits with longer (6–12 mm) and rigid spinules and by seeds more numerous (usually four) and commonly laterally flattened. R. A. Schlising (1993) noted that var. agrestis intergrades more or less completely with plants identifiable as var. fabacea and did not recognize varieties.

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Source FNA vol. 6, p. 23.
Parent taxa Cucurbitaceae > Marah
Sibling taxa
M. gilensis, M. guadalupensis, M. horrida, M. macrocarpa, M. oregana, M. watsonii
Synonyms Echinocystis fabacea, E. fabacea var. inermis, E. inermis, E. scabrida, M. fabacea var. agrestis, M. inermis, Micrampelis fabacea var. agrestis
Name authority (Naudin) Greene: Leafl. Bot. Observ. Crit. 2: 36. (1910)
Web links 
Unless otherwise noted, all data comes from the online version of the Flora of North America, who have made most of their content available via a Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0).



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