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Pectocarya heterocarpa
Also called Mixed Nut Pectocarya
Chuckwalla combseed is a small annual herb in the borage family that grows wild in desert and dry scrub. It is a wild species rarely grown on purpose, and its seeds are armed with comb-like prickles that help them stick to passing animals.
Pectocarya heterocarpa is a species of flowering plant in the borage family known by the common names chuckwalla combseed and mixed-nut pectocarya. It is native to the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, where it grows in desert, mountain and plateau habitat, in scrub, woodland, and open areas. This is an annual herb producing a slender, rough-haired stem prostrate or upright to a maximum length of about 25 centimeters. The small, pointed linear leaves are alternately arranged, widely spaced along the stem. The inflorescence is a series of flowers, each on a curved pedicel. The flower has small green sepals and tiny white petals. The fruit is an array of four nutlets each lined with comblike prickles.
Sleeping combseed · Peninsular pectocarya · Broadfruit combseed · Little combseed · Curvenut combseed · Moth combseed · Combseed
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Pectocarya heterocarpa 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.
