Mentzelia veatchiana
Mentzelia lagarosa
Veatch's blazing star, white-stem blazingstar, white-stem stick-leaf
slender-lobed blazingstar
solitary, erect, straight;
branches distal, distal longest, antrorse, straight; hairy.
blade 11.3–103 × 4.8–20.1 mm, widest intersinus distance 1.2–5.7 mm;
proximal oblanceolate to elliptic, margins pinnate to pinnatisect, lobes 8–20, slightly antrorse or perpendicular to leaf axis, 1.4–8.2 mm;
distal elliptic to lanceolate, base not clasping, margins pinnatisect, lobes 6–16, slightly antrorse or perpendicular to leaf axis, 1.6–7.5 mm;
abaxial surface with simple grappling-hook, complex grappling-hook, and occasionally needlelike trichomes, adaxial surface with simple grappling-hook and needlelike trichomes.
persisting;
petiole present or absent;
blade linear-lanceolate, margins deeply to shallowly lobed.
petiole absent;
blade ovate-lanceolate to lanceolate, to 17 cm, margins usually deeply lobed to dentate, rarely entire.
usually green with prominent white base usually conspicuously extending outwards from midvein, rarely green, usually ovate, rarely lanceolate, 3.3–6.2 × 1.5–3.2 mm, width 1/4–7/8 length, not concealing capsule, margins usually 3–7-lobed, rarely entire.
margins usually entire, sometimes toothed or pinnate.
sepals 2–5 mm;
petals red to orange proximally, orange to yellow distally, 4–7(–10) mm, apex retuse;
stamens 20+, 3–7 mm, filaments monomorphic, filiform, unlobed;
styles (3–)3.5–6 mm.
petals golden yellow, 8.3–13 × 2.2–5.4 mm, apex acute or rounded, glabrous abaxially;
stamens golden yellow, 5 outermost petaloid, filaments narrowly spatulate, slightly clawed, 6.5–10.7 × 1.7–4.3 mm, without anthers, second whorl with anthers;
anthers straight after dehiscence, epidermis smooth;
styles 6.1–10.2 mm.
clavate, 8–28 × 2–4 mm, axillary curved to 70° at maturity, usually inconspicuously longitudinally ribbed.
cylindric, 12.1–21.2 × 4.9–7.6 mm, base tapering or rounded, not longitudinally ridged.
15–35, in 2+ rows distal to mid fruit, tan, dark-mottled, usually irregularly polygonal, occasionally triangular prisms proximal to mid fruit, surface tuberculate under 10x magnification; recurved flap over hilum absent;
seed coat cell outer periclinal wall domed, domes on seed edges more than or equal to 1/2 as tall as wide at maturity.
coat anticlinal cell walls wavy, papillae 29–31 per cell.
= 54.
= 22.
Mentzelia veatchiana
Mentzelia lagarosa
Mentzelia veatchiana is the most common and widely distributed hexaploid species in sect. Trachyphytum. It exhibits considerable morphological variation and can be difficult to distinguish from M. montana in northern California. Like the larger-flowered M. pectinata, M. veatchiana has interfertile populations with petal colors ranging from orange to yellow (J. E. Zavortink 1966). When bearing orange petals, M. veatchiana is easily distinguished from other species. Reports of M. veatchiana from Utah are based on specimens treated here as M. montana.
(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Mentzelia lagarosa is allopatric with two of the three species most similar to it, namely M. holmgreniorum and M. filifolia, and nearly allopatric with the third, M. laciniata. Where the ranges of M. lagarosa and M. laciniata overlap in western Colorado, they can be distinguished by petal length [8.3–13 mm in M. lagarosa versus 14–23.8(–26) mm in M. laciniata], outermost stamen length (6.5–10.7 mm in M. lagarosa versus 12–20 mm in M. laciniata), and number of seed coat cell papillae (29–31 per cell in M. lagarosa versus 5–14 per cell in M. laciniata); in addition, M. lagarosa bears both simple grappling-hook and needlelike trichomes on its adaxial leaf blade surfaces, whereas leaf blades of M. laciniata bear only needlelike trichomes adaxially. In the Intermountain Flora, N. H. Holmgren et al. (2005) treated M. lagarosa as a synonym of M. multiflora, but J. J. Schenk and L. Hufford (2011) showed not only that M. lagarosa is distinct from M. multiflora, but also that the latter does not occur in the intermountain region.
(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
CA
OR
Flora NW
PNW Herbaria
WildflowerSearch
iNaturalist
USDA Plants Database
