Plant Description
A spreading and much-branched shrub which often forms thickets in flats and washes. The lobed leaves are thin. Showy white flowers are followed by many fruits with long pink plumes.
Low much-branched shrub, fleshy bark, slender hairy branches. Leaves divided into 3 to 7 lobes, hairy on top, scaly below. Flowers solitary or few per branch, large white and showy with 5 petals. Fruits oblong, hairy, tipped by pinkish feathery plumes.
Habitat
Found on gravelly flats, sediment and dry rocky slopes.
Leaves
Leaves are smooth or hairy on top and scaly beneath; up to 3/4 inch long. Usually winter-deciduous, pinnately divided into 3 to 7 narrowly oblong lobes; dark green above, woolly beneath.
Flowers
Flowers are white to pinkish, 5 petaled and yellow centered, up to 2 inches wide. Flowers are showy, usually unisexual, in loose clusters of 1 to 3 at the end of elongate, nearly leafless stalks.
Fruit
Ovoid achene fruits with numerous 1 inch long feathery pinkish plumes persist on the plant in the fall.