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Tetradymia spinosa
Also called Catclaw Horsebrush, Thorny Horsebrush
Tetradymia spinosa is a species of flowering plant in the aster family known by the common name shortspine horsebrush. It is native to the western United States, especially the basins and plateaus west of the Rocky Mountains. It grows in sagebrush, woodlands, and scrub habitat, often among shadscale in alkaline areas such as playas. It is a bushy shrub with many branches coated in woolly white fibers and growing to a maximum height around a meter. The leaves are narrow, curving, and hooklike, hardening into sharp spines up to 2.5 centimeters long. The inflorescence bears one or two flower heads which are each enveloped in four to six woolly phyllaries. Each head contains up to 8 tubular yellow disc flowers up to 1 cm long. The fruit is a densely hairy achene which may be nearly 2 cm long, including its pappus of long bristles.
Striped cottonthorn · Longspine horsebrush · Spineless horsebrush · Hairy horsebrush · Littleleaf horsebrush · Nuttall's horsebrush · Mojave cottonthorn · Fourpart horsebrush · Horsebrush
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Tetradymia spinosa by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.
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.
