Native. Perennial. Propagates by seeds and by rootstocks.

Time of bloom: May to September.

Seed-time: June to October.

Range: Southern California to Southern Utah, Arizona, and New

Mexico. Habitat: Moist, saline soil; troublesome in cultivated crops.

The most troublesome part of this plant is its thick, creeping rootstock, which is very acrid, astringent, and strong-scented. Stem scape-like, six inches to two feet tall, with a large, broadly ovate or oblong, clasping leaf just above the middle, in the axil of which is a fascicle of one to three much smaller petioled leaves; root leaves thick, oblong, with rounded apex and heart-shaped base, usually slightly broadened toward the tip, entire, two to eight inches in length, on petioles about as long as the blades, dilated and sheathing at base. Flowers very small, densely crowded on a thickish conical, terminal spike about an inch long, at the base of which is a persistent involucre of six or eight oblong, showy, white bracts about an inch in length, having the appearance of petals and resembling a large white anemone. The true flowers on the spike have no perianth but have six to eight stamens and a one-celled ovary, sunk in the fleshy rachis of the spike and having three or four spreading stigmas; each flower is subtended by a minute white bract. The whole plant has a very pungent, spicy odor. Fruit a berry or capsule, with three to four carpels each containing six to ten very small rounded seeds. (Fig. 46.)

Fig. 46. - Yerba Mansa (Anemop-sis californica). X 1/4.

Means Of Control

Drainage; followed by intensive hoe-cultivation, alternated with heavy seeding to grass or clover.