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Picture Notes: On 04/05/2011 my cousin and I visited the Hoover Dam and the new by-pass bridge. The terrain bordering the walkway that leads from a parking area up to the Hoover Dam bypass bridge contained hundreds of these tiny, delicate flowers (Figs. 01-03), many seemingly growing right out of the rock. Even though we got lots of pictures of the dam and bridge, I thought seeing and capturing these were the find of the day.
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Description: Notched-Leaved Phacella (Phacelia crenulata), a.k.a. Cleftleaf Wild Heliotrope, Scorpionweed, Scalloped Phacelia and Caterpillar Weed, is a species of phacelia that is native to the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. It is an annual plant that grows from 3-24 inches tall, with crenate (having a round-toothed or scalloped edge) to deeply lobed green hairy leaves up to 3 to 4.5 inches in length. Crushed leaves smell like onions.
Its open flower clusters, coiled like a scorpion’s tail, are made up of many small, bell-shaped, purple flowers with white or light blue throats that all grow from the same side of the branching flower stalks. The individual flowers are 1/2 inch wide and have 5 round lobes. The stems are reddish, hairy, and sticky.
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| (Fig. 02) |
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The petals of the flowers are deep violet to blue-purple in color and up to a half inch long. It can produce a skin rash similar to that produced by poison ivy or poison oak. Notch-leaf Phacelia is a common component of desert vegetation communities during the spring. Its habitat is dry, well-drained sandy and gravelly soils on flats, in and along washes, on bajadas, and on moderate slopes into the middle-elevation mountains up to 7,000 feet from Nevada to California, Utah, and Arizona, and south into northwestern Mexico.
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| (Fig. 03) |
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