Desert candle or squaw cabbage is an erect, unbranched, glabrous annual sometimes slightly hirsute at the base and with a conspicuously inflated or swollen stem that is hollow and sometimes branched above.  The leaves are ovate to oblanceolate, entire to denticulate especially toward the tip, up to 2-3/4" long, and clasping at the base. There is a terminal tuft of flowers, and below that they are loosely scattered along the stem on glabrous to pilose ascending pedicels to 1-1/4" long.  The sepals are purple in bud and white with purple tips at anthesis, acute and scarious-margined.  The petals are white, linear, crisped near the tip, and slightly longer than the sepals.  The fruit is a stout, linear silique 2" to 4" long with dark-brown oblique-oblong seeds.  Despite its unusual nature, this species is quite common in the central and western Mojave Desert between 2000' and 5000' on open sandy plains in creosote bush scrub and joshua tree woodland.  Desert candle blooms between March and May.

Click here for Latin name derivations: 1) Caulanthus 2) inflatus.
Pronunciation: kaw-LAN-thus in-FLAY-tus.
Click here for Botanical Term Meanings.