Flatcrown Buckwheat

Eriogonum deflexum is common and often weedy throughout most of its range. It is an important source of small seed for birds. The reported use of the stem (M. L. Zigmond 1981, as E. insigne) by the Kawaiisu people as a smoking pipe is incorrect; the taxon in point was actually E. deflexum var. baratum. The desert metalmark butterfly (Apodemia mormo deserti) is found in association with E. deflexum.

Herbs, erect to spreading, annual, (0.5-)1-10(-20) dm, glabrous, occasionally glaucous, greenish to grayish. Stems: caudex absent; aerial flowering stems erect, solid or occasionally hollow and fistulose, 0.3-3(-4) dm, glabrous, occasionally glaucous. Leaves basal; petiole 1-7 cm, usually floccose; blade cordate to reniform or nearly orbiculate, 1-2.5(-4) × 2-4(-5) cm, densely white-tomentose abaxially, less so to floccose or subglabrous and grayish to greenish adaxially, margins entire. Inflorescences cymose, open to diffuse, flat-topped, spreading, hemispheric or narrowly erect and strict with whiplike branches, 10-90(-180) × 5-50 cm; branches glabrous, occasionally glaucous; bracts 3, scalelike, 1-3 × 0.5-1.5 mm. Peduncles absent or deflexed, rarely some ± erect distally, straight, slender to stout, 0.1-1.5 cm, glabrous. Involucres narrowly turbinate to turbinate, 1.5-2.5(-3) × 1-2.5 mm, glabrous; teeth 5, erect, (0.2-)0.5-1 mm. Flowers 1-2.5 mm; perianth white to pink, with greenish to reddish midribs, becoming pinkish to reddish, glabrous; tepals dimorphic, those of outer whorl oblong or cordate to ovate, those of inner whorl lanceolate to narrowly ovate; stamens included, 1-1.5 mm; filaments glabrous or sparsely pilose proximally. Achenes brown to dark brown, 3-gonous, (1.5-)2-3 mm, glabrous.

Eriogonum deflexum is a species of wild buckwheat known by the common names flatcrown buckwheat, flat-top buckwheat, and skeletonweed. This plant is native to the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, where it is common and grows in a variety of habitats, especially desert scrub. It is somewhat weedy where it is most abundant. This is an annual which varies in size from small patches on the ground to tangled bushes approaching two meters in height; it may be dense or thin and spindly. This is a brown or greenish weedy-looking herb with a many-branched stem. The leaves are located at the base of the plant and are rounded and woolly and one to four centimeters long. Small clusters of flowers appear at intervals along the branches with each flower only one to three millimeters wide and white or pinkish in color.