Desert Sand Verbena

Plants annual. Stems decumbent to ascending, often widely spreading, much branched in large plants, forming large, loose mats, elongate, usually with reddish tinge, glandular-pubescent to long viscid-villous. Leaves: petiole 0.5-5 cm; blade deltate-ovate to ovate or elliptic, 1-5 × 1-4.5 cm, margins entire to sinuate and ± undulate, adaxial surface glabrous or glandular-pubescent, abaxial surface glandular-pubescent. Inflorescences: peduncle longer than subtending petiole; bracts lanceolate to lance-ovate, 2.5-11 × 1-3 mm, papery, viscid-villous; flowers 15-35. Perianth: tube pink, 10-35 mm, limb usually magenta, with light eyespot, rarely white, 6-18 mm diam. Fruits usually winged, ± obdeltate in profile, 5-10 × 4-15 mm, indurate, ± rugose-veined, sometimes inconspicuously so; wings 3-5, not folded, without dilations, thin, truncate distally, equaling or extending slightly beyond conic apex of fruit body, interior spongy.

Abronia villosa S. Wats. Am. Nat. 7: 302. 1873
Annual, much branched, the branches stout, 1-5 dm. long, ascending, decumbent, or procumbent, villous and usually very viscid, often tinged with red; petioles slender or stout, 0.5-3.5 cm. long; leaf-blades rhombic-ovate to oval, oblong, deltoid-ovate, or suborbicular, 1-3.5 cm. long, 1-2.5 cm. wide, rounded or subcordate at the base and often very unequal, sometimes short-decurrent, broadly rounded to acutish at the apex, entire or sometimes undulate, viscid-puberulent or glabrate on the upper surface, usually viscid-villous beneath; peduncles slender, 2-8.5 cm. long, densely or sparsely viscid-villous; bracts linear-lanceolate to
ovate-lanceolate, 6-9 mm. long, attenuate or long-attenuate, scarious, viscid-villous outside; perianth 17-20 mm. long, purplish-red, the tube densely villous throughout with short or long hairs, rarely only puberulent above, the limb about 1 cm. broad; fruit 6-8 mm. long and often broader than long, the body indurate, rugose-veined, villous above, the wings 3 or 4, or sometimes abortive, broad, thin, usually prolonged above the body, rounded to acutish above, whitish, stramineous, or tinged with red, ciliolate above; seed narrowly oblong, 2.5 mm. long, dark-brown, lustrous.
Type locality: Arizona.
Distribution: In sandy soil, southwestern Arizona, western Sonora, and southern California.

Abronia villosa is a species of sand-verbena known by the common names desert sand-verbena and chaparral sand-verbena. It is in the four o'clock plant family (Nyctaginaceae). It is native to sandy areas in the deserts of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, associated with creosote-bush and coastal-sage scrub habitats.