Flora of North America species comparison

erect to decumbent, green or flushed with red on proximal parts or throughout, unbranched or bushy and branched from base, with side branches arising obliquely or arcuately from rosette, 10–60 cm.

in a basal rosette and cauline, basal 8–30 × 0.5–3 cm, cauline 3.5–20 ×0.5–2.7 cm;

blade grayish green to dull green, very narrowly oblanceolate to narrowly oblanceolate or narrowly elliptic, margins flat, subentire or remotely dentate, teeth sometimes blunt, sometimes sinuate-dentate proximally;

bracts persistent.

usually recurved with ascending tip distally, rarely suberect, unbranched.

opening near sunset;

buds erect, 3–5 mm diam., with free tips subterminal, spreading to erect, 2.5–4 mm;

floral tube 15–40 mm;

sepals green to yellow, flushed with red and dark red flecked or red-striped, 9–17 mm;

petals yellow to pale yellow, fading yellowish white to pale yellowish orange, very broadly obcordate, 7–20 mm;

filaments 6–15 mm, anthers 3–7 mm, pollen ca. 50% fertile;

style 20–45 mm, stigma surrounded by anthers at anthesis.

erect or slightly spreading, usually rusty brown when dry, narrowly lanceoloid to lanceoloid, 15–40 × 4–8 mm, free tips of valves 0.5 mm.

1.1–1.2 ×0.8–1 mm.

thalassaphila (Brandegee) W.

& W.

.

differs from subsp. drummondii in a number of modally distinctive morphological features, especially floral tubes 2–3.5 cm, sepal tips 0.3–1 mm, capsules 2–4 cm × 2.5–5 mm in diameter and those, coupled with the great disjunction from the Atlantic coast of the United States and Mexico to the southern tip of Baja California, make it worthy of recognition.

drummondii is self-compatible and outcrossing.

= 14.