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Colorado buckwheat

Eriogonum coloradense

Colorado buckwheat
Photo: John Powers, CC BY 4.0

Colorado buckwheat is a tiny mat-forming subshrub native only to Colorado, found mostly near the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness. It is a cold-hardy alpine-type plant that needs open, sunny, very well-drained conditions and is rarely grown outside its native range.

Family
Polygonaceae (Buckwheat family)
Grows as
Shrub
Light
Full sun
Water
Water sparingly; let the soil dry out fully between waterings and avoid soggy ground.
Soil
Gritty, very well-drained mineral soil such as sand, gravel or rocky scree mix.
Temperature
Tolerates cold well as a native alpine plant; protect from prolonged heat and wet winter soil.
How easy
Hard
Native range
Colorado
Climate
temperate

About

Eriogonum coloradense is a species of flowering plant in the buckwheat family known by the common name Colorado buckwheat. It is endemic to Colorado in the United States.

This species is a mat-forming herb growing just a few centimeters tall. The leaves are located around the base of the plant. They are up to 4 or 5 centimeters long and are mostly green on top with woolly undersides. The inflorescences are borne atop flowering stems reaching up to about 10 centimeters tall. The inflorescence is a cluster of tiny white to pink flowers. This species is most closely related to Eriogonum lonchophyllum, and some authors, including Eriogonum expert James Reveal, suspect it may be a form of that species.

Other Eriogonum plants

Abert's buckwheat · Winged buckwheat · Shale barren buckwheat · Trinity buckwheat · Mono buckwheat · Anglestem buckwheat · San Jacinto buckwheat · Ione buckwheat · Santa Cruz Island buckwheat · Clay buckwheat · Sulphur Hot Springs buckwheat · Bailey's buckwheat

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Eriogonum coloradense by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.

The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.

Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.

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