Sticky-leaved rabbitbrush is a rounded shrub growing about 3' tall with gray-white bark and glabrous stems.  The alternate leaves are linear to linear-lanceolate, less than 1/4" wide and up to 2" long, and have sharply acute tips.  They are pale green and glabrous, somewhat viscid, and often look as though someone had taken them by the tips and given them a twist.  The inflorescence is a fairly dense flat-topped or rounded-
topped cyme with 5-flowered heads containing only disk flowers.  The involucres are 1/4" tall with lanceolate phyllaries that are strongly graduate in 5 vertical ranks but not keeled, yellow-green and ± viscid.  Sticky-leaved rabbitbrush, which according to its Latin name should perhaps be called sticky-flowered rabbitbrush, is a common species in sagebrush, pinyon-juniper woodland and other dry open places growing from 4000' to perhaps 9000' in the San Jacinto and San Bernardino Mts and north, blooming from August to September.  These pictures were taken at an elevation of slightly over 8000' just south of Onyx Summit in the San Bernardino Mts.

Click here for Latin name derivations: 1) Chrysothamnus  2) viscidiflorus.
Pronunciation: kry-so-THAM-nus vis-id-i-FLOR-us.
Click here for Botanical Term Meanings.