Annuals, slender-taprooted or fibrous-rooted. Stems erect, simple or branched from base, 3–38 cm, glabrous or sparsely hirtellous, finely villosulous-glandular above nodes. Leaves cauline, basal deciduous by flowering; petiole 1–35 mm, distals 0 mm; blade 1-veined or palmately 3-veined, elliptic to elliptic-obovate, oblanceolate, or oblong, 3–55 mm, longer than wide, base attenuate, margins narrowly pinnately lobed or dissected, sometimes merely shallowly toothed, apex acute to obtuse, surfaces glabrate. Flowers plesiogamous, 2–8, from medial to distal nodes, chasmogamous, sometimes cleistogamous. Fruiting pedicels nodding 30–140º at calyx base, 5–25 mm. Fruiting calyces red-spotted, cylindric-campanulate, inflated, sagittally compressed, 8–10 mm, glabrate, throat closing, lobes ca. equal size or adaxial slightly longer. Corollas yellow, throat red-spotted, abaxial limb of larger usually with 1 large red splotch, bilaterally symmetric, ± bilabiate; tube-throat funnelform, 4–6 mm, exserted 1–2 mm beyond calyx margin; limb expanded 5–6 mm. Styles glabrous. Anthers included, glabrous. Capsules included, stipitate, 5–7 mm. 2n = 28.

Phenology: Flowering Apr–Jul(–Aug).
Habitat: Cracks, depressions, and seeps in granite outcrops, ledges, talus and scree, rocky streamsides, rocky slopes, roadsides, intermittent drainages.
Elevation: 900–2300(–3300) m.

Distribution

• Generated Map
• Legacy Map

Calif.

Discussion

Erythranthe laciniata is known from Amador County south to Kern County.

As in Erythranthe nasuta, the adaxial calyx lobe in E. laciniata tends to be narrowly lanceolate to triangular (noselike) and perceptibly falcate, curving slightly upward both in flower and in fruit. The adaxial lobe is not so prominently protruding as it often is in E. nasuta.

Corolla size is variable in Erythranthe laciniata, but the size of those with an open throat (versus much reduced in size and apparently cleistogamous) is not strongly correlated with size of the individual plant, and all on one plant are about the same size (compare with E. nasuta). Corollas on some plants, however, are all or nearly all greatly reduced and apparently cleistogamous. Fertilization in even the larger corollas apparently is autogamous; the anther pairs are slightly separated or equal in level, and the stigma is in the middle of the anthers or at the level of the adaxial pair.

Selected References

None.

Lower Taxa

None.