BERBERIDACEAE -- Barberry Family - New Mexico Flores

Scientific Name:
Descurainia sophia
Size:
30 - 80 cm
BRASSICACEAE -- Mustard Family
Description:
Erect annual herb, stems usually branched
above, with soft branched or star-shaped hairs
and often with simple hairs. Leaves alternate,
ovate or obovate in outline, 1 - 10 cm long;
lower leaves twice or thrice pinnate, with 2 to 6
pinnatifid leaflets, upper smaller and twice
pinnate or pinnatifid, the ultimate segments
linear. Herbage in flower clusters with starshaped
hairs. Flowers perfect, on ascending
stalks, in loose clusters at branch ends,
elongating in fruit. Sepals 4, erect, 2 - 3 mm
long. Petals 4. Stamens 6, 4 equal, 2 shorter.
Fruit a slender pod 1 - 3 cm long, about 1 mm
wide, pointing upward, divided into 2
compartments by a thin membrane, with one
row of seeds per cell.
152
Common Name:
Flixweed, tansy mustard
Color:
Yellow
Notes:
During the 19th century, the species name
sophia was the genus name for Descurainia.
New Mexico’s first major flora (1915) by
Wooton and Standley does not list Descurainia.
The term tansy mustard probably derives from
the plant’s somewhat vague resemblance to the
European garden plant tansy, Tanacetum
vulgare (Asteraceae). Tansy mustard blooms
from May through July between 4000 and 8000
ft.
Introduced*