Mousetail ivesia is a curious little plant that looks like a pile of fuzzy gray spaghetti.  It is a silvery, tufted plant with slender suberect stems and terete mousetail-like leaves
1-1/2" to 4" long mostly crowded in a basal rosette.  Each of the leaves has from 60 to 80 minute and indistinct tightly imbricate leaflets per side.  The inflorescence is an open cyme with many separate flowers, each on a pedicel 1/4" to 1-1/4" long.  The floral tubes are broadly funnelform to disciform about an 1/8" width.  The obovate to roundish white petals are five in number, twice the length of the sepals, and the whole flower is only about 1/4" in diameter.  There are typically around 20 stamens with filiform fiaments.  Mousetail ivesia generally grows on sandy or gravelly slopes and ridges from 6500' to 9000' in the Transverse Ranges and San Jacinto Mts to Mt. Pinos and the Sierra Nevadas, blooming from June to August.  These pictures were taken on the Dawson Saddle Trail in the San Gabriels.

Click here for Latin name derivations: 1) Ivesia  2) santolinoides.
Pronunciation: IVES-ee-a san-toe-lie-NO-i-dees.
Click here for Botanical Term Meanings.