Silky Mousetail

Ivesia pickeringii A. Gray, Proc. Am. Acad. 6 : 531. 1865
Potentilla Pickeringii Greene, Pittonia 1 : 105. 1887.
Horkelia Pickeringii Rydb. Mem. Dep. Bot. Columbia Univ. 2 : 145. 1898. Perennial, with a deep and thick root, crowned by a short erect caudex covered with brown-hairy scales; stems erect or ascending, 2-A dm, high, finely villous, more or less leafy, dichotomously branched; stipules lanceolate; leaves numerous, grayish or white, silkyvillous, pinnate with very numerous, crowded and somewhat imbricate leaflets, these generally less than 5 mm. long, 2-4-cleft to the base into oblong-oval segments ; cyme at first dense, in age open, dichotomously branched, but with nearly sessile flowers ; hypanthium cup-shaped or turbinate, villous, in age 4 mm. in diameter ; bractlets linear-lanceolate, about a third shorter than the broadly lanceolate acuminate sepals, which are 3-4 mm. long ; petals yellow, spatulate, a little exceeding the sepals, rounded at the apex ; stamens 20 ; filaments filiform.
Type locality : Probably at Sacramento, California.
Distribution : Central California.

Ivesia pickeringii is an uncommon species of flowering plant in the rose family known by the common names silky mousetail and Pickering's ivesia. It is endemic to the Klamath Mountains of northern California where it is a plant of mountain meadows, often on serpentine soils. This is a perennial herb forming tufts of long, erect leaves and thin, naked stems. Each leaf is a taillike strip of overlapping lobed leaflets. The reddish to greenish stems reach 30 to 50 centimeters in height and bear inflorescences of clustered flowers. The stems, leaves, and inflorescences are all covered in fuzzy white to gray hairs. Each flower is about a centimeter wide, with pinkish-green triangular sepals and longer, narrower pink or purple petals. In the center of the flower are 20 stamens and a few pistils.