Leaves ovate (egg-shaped, a bit wider toward the base) to ovate/roundish, tapering to an acute tip. Leaves small (~0.5-3 cm long) and densely fascicled (several leaves fanning out of a node on the stem), leaves thick and medium to dark green (sometimes with a reddish tinge) and glabrous (smooth-surfaced) or mostly so above and white and tomentose (woolly, felted) underneath. Margins entire (smooth) and often rolled under, which can give the leaf a triangular or cordate (heart-shaped) look. Prominent indented midrib vein with pinnate veining from along this. A small, loosely branched shrub, generally ~0.3 to 1 m tall and ~0.5-2 m wide. Stems are mostly decumbent or prostrate (sprawling outward, touching the ground), thinly floccose (with small tufts of soft, woolly hair),and they are densely leafy almost to the very tips. Inflorescences are terminal on the stems, which end in a peduncle or flower stalk ~2-5 cm long. The peduncle may terminate in a single capitate (head- like) flower cluster or it may fork into 1 or more subsidiary peduncles, each of which may terminate in another ball-like cluster or a whorl of them, forming a roughly flat-topped cluster (cyme). Each such ball is 1-2 cm in diameter and subtended by a whorl of leaf-like bracts, elliptical (oval) in shape and often floccose. Flowers are white or pale pink or pale greenish- yellow, becoming pinker over the course of the blooming season, and then become dry and rust-colored, the dry inflorescences persistent until the next flowering season. Flowers roughly June through November, but retains dried inflorescences all year. Fruit is a glabrous brown achene (dry, single seeded fruit) ~2.5-3 mm across. This species is found only on beach dunes and bluffs under 700 m on the Central and South coasts of California from the Bay Area to San Diego.
Eriogonum parvifolium (Polygonaceae): dune or coast or cliff or seacliff 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.