Leaves ovate (egg-shaped, wider toward the base), elliptical (symmetrical oval widest in the middle), or obovate (egg-shaped, wider toward the tip), tip obtuse (rounded) and base cuneate (tapering), ~1.25-3 cm long, margins entire (smooth) but distinctly wavy or crisped (irregularly curled). The leaf is densely tomentose or woolly, especially on the underside, giving it a silvery or ashy green color above and a whitish or silver underneath. Stems are also tomentose and grey. Leaves not fascicled. Attached to stems with short petioles ~1-15 mm long becoming winged to merge with the tapering base of the leaf. Pinnately veined (veins branch off the midrib axial vein, and the veins are somewhat indented, creating a vaguely quilted surface. Inflorescences are terminal (at the end of their stems), forming capitate (round, headlike) clusters mounted on long peduncles, which themselves may fork and branch into long subsidiary peduncles to support still more clusters of flowerheads, each fork sporting a ball-like cluster of its own, which is subtended by a whorl of 3-10 leaf-like bracts~3-5 mm long. The whole effect is of a network or tangle of flower clusters and supporting peduncles and stems covering the plant. Flowers are pinkish or whitish, turning rust colored with age, villous or softly hairy, in congested heads ~1-2.5 cm in diameter. Blooms from June to December, but retains the dried, rust colored inflorescences until the next flowering season. Fruit an achene (dry, single seeded), dull brown, glabrous (smooth-surfaced), ~2-2.5 mm long, irregularly angled. Plant is a shrub about 0.5-1.5 m in height and 1-2 m in width, with both erect and spreading stems branching profusely in a zigzagging fashion. Found mostly on coast-facing slopes under 500 m in elevation on the coastal strand and in coastal sage scrub from the Bay Area to the Los Angeles area and on the northern Channel Island group.
Eriogonum cinereum (Polygonaceae): ashy-leaf buckwheat or coast buckwheat or coastal buckwheat or grey coast eriogonum
The development of this key was partially funded through the Geoscience Diversity Enhancement Program (Award #0703798) and through a course of re-assigned time provided by the CSULB Scholarly and Creative Activities Committee. Thanks also to the students in sections of biogeography, introductory physical geography, GDEP, and LSAMP for "test-driving" various editions of this key.