Leaves linear (very thin, much longer than wide) to oblanceolate (much longer than wide, wider toward the tip), fascicled (several clustered into a bunch), small (~1-1.5 cm long), sclerophyllous (leathery), margins entire and rolled under, tapering to an acute tip, green or yellow-olive and glabrous (smooth- surfaced) or nearly so on top and white tomentose (woolly) underneath, sometimes tipped in rusty-reddish. Freely branching small shrub ~0.1-2 m tall and spreading to ~0.5-3 m. Stems are reddish, usually lightly pubescent (hairy/downy), leafy with fascicles alternating ~0.5-2 cm, and terminating in a ~2-10 cm long peduncle. The peduncle supports a simple or compound inflorescence. Inflorescences at the end of main stems are open cymose (roughly flat-topped) collections of several capitate (round, head-like) clusters on subsidiary peduncles of varying lengths ~0.1-10 cm long whorling out of the top of the main peduncle. This whorl of secondary peduncles is subtended by a whorl of leaf-like bracts of linear or narrowly elliptical shape ~1 cm long. Often there are smaller axillary stems coming out of leaf fascicles just below the main peduncle, which terminate in a single peduncle and capitate cluster of flowers. Flowerheads emerge white in April, transitioning to pinkish by August and transitioning to rust-colored by November, being retained in this dried, rusty condition until fresh flowers come out the following year. Fruit is a glabrous brown achene (dry, 1-seeded fruit) ~1.8-2.5 mm long. Found on dry slopes, washes, and canyons under 2300 m in chaparral, California sage scrub, desert scrub, desert woodland, and the edges of grasslands along the coast from the Bay Area into Baja (including the Channel Islands), inland in the Central Coast Ranges, southern Sierra and the Tehachapis, and the Transverse and Peninsular ranges of Southern California, and the Colorado/Sonora, Mojave, and Great Basin deserts east into Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and northern Mexico.
Eriogonum fasciculatum (Polygonaceae): wild buckwheat or California buckwheat or Eastern Mojave buckwheat
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.