Nevin's brickellbush is a small perennial shrub with erect, branching stems, covered with dense white wool, 1' to 2' tall that is not nearly as common as its larger relative, California brickellbush.  Its leaves are alternate, sessile to subsessile, ± ovate, and entire to dentate-serrate.  The discoid flowering heads are in open panicles with 1-3 heads terminal on short branchlets.  The involucres are subcylindric and the heads are approximately 23-flowered with overlapping linear-oblong, wooly phyllaries that have somewhat spreading or recurved tips.  The corollas of the disk flowers are 5-toothed and creamy-whitish, and there are pappi of many hair-like bristles.  This species of brickellbush occupies dry slopes and washes in coastal sage scrub and chaparral from the Santa Monica Mountains and the south face of the San Gabriels to Santa Barbara County and SW Kern Co.  The Jepson Manual also puts it in desert scrub of the Mojave Desert.  It blooms September to November.  These pictures were taken along the Clamshell Motorway above Monrovia.

Click here for Latin name derivations: 1) Brickellia  2) nevinii.
Pronunciation: brik-EL-ee-a NEV-in-ee-eye.
Click here for Botanical Term Meanings.