Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

Barron's wild buckwheat

Eriogonum spectabile

Also called Barron's Buckwheat

Barron's wild buckwheat
Photo: Beth Corbin, Lassen National Forest, Public domain

Barron's wild buckwheat is a rare, compact mat-forming subshrub native only to a few sites near Chester in Plumas County, California, growing on glaciated andesite in scrubby mountain forest. It is a wild species seldom grown in gardens, so its care needs are inferred from related wild buckwheats.

Family
Polygonaceae (Buckwheat family)
Grows as
Shrub
Light
Full sun
Water
Water sparingly once established; allow soil to dry out between waterings and avoid wet roots.
Soil
Very well-drained, gritty or rocky mineral soil, ideally with some andesite or gravel.
Temperature
Hardy in cool temperate conditions; tolerant of cold winters typical of mountain climates, but protect from prolonged waterlogging.
How easy
Hard
Native range
California
Climate
temperate

About

Eriogonum spectabile is a rare species of wild buckwheat known by the common name Barron's buckwheat. It is endemic to Plumas County, California, where it is known from two occurrences in Lassen National Forest near Chester. There are approximately 250 individuals in existence. It grows in scrubby, forested mountain habitat, only on glaciated andesite substrates. This rare plant was discovered in 1997 and described to science as a new species in 2001.

This is a small, compact shrub growing in a mat up to 25 centimeters wide and 15 tall. The spreading stems bear woolly foliage, each leaf with an oval blade up to 2 centimeters long by 1 wide. The plant blooms with slender, erect flowering stems bearing umbels of flowers. The flowers are white, aging pink, hairy and glandular, and about half a centimeter long.

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 spectabile 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.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…