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Petalonyx thurberi
Also called Sandpaper Plant, Thurber's Sandpaperplant
Thurber's sandpaper plant is a rounded, clumpy desert subshrub with rough-haired stems and small white flowers, native to the deserts of the southwestern U.S. and northwestern Mexico. It needs full sun, very well-drained sandy soil, and minimal water.
Petalonyx thurberi is a species of flowering plant in the family Loasaceae known by the common names Thurber's sandpaper plant and common sandpaper plant. It is native to the deserts of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, where it grows in sandy and scrubby habitat. It is a rounded or spreading, clumpy subshrub made up of many rough-haired stems approaching one meter in maximum height. The stems are lined with clasping leaves varying in shape from lance-shaped to triangular to oval and sometimes toothed. The inflorescence at the end of the stem is a small, crowded raceme of several flowers. The white flower appears tubular, its petals fused near the spreading tips but open lower, the stamens emerging from outside the corolla.
There are two subspecies, with the rarer, ssp. gilmanii (Death Valley sandpaper plant), limited to the deserts in and around Death Valley.
Narrowleaf sandpaper plant · Shinyleaf sandpaper plant · Sandpaper plant
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Petalonyx thurberi 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.
