Standley's Bloodleaf

Herbs, perennial, 5-10 dm. Stems erect to ascending or sprawling, sparsely pubescent. Leaves opposite; blade ovate, 3-6 × 2-4 cm, apex rounded to acute, pubescent. Inflorescences: panicles 1.5-4 dm; bracts and bracteoles ¹/2-¹/3 as long as tepals. Flowers pedicellate; tepals whitish to stramineous, ovate, 1-1.3 mm, apex acute, densely lanate. Utricles included in tepals, greenish, ovoid, 0.8 mm, apex acute. Seeds 0.6 mm.

Ariz., N.Mex., Tex.; Mexico (Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Nuevo León, Sonora).

Flowering summer.

Sheltered ravines, canyons, pastures; 1400-2000m.

Iresine heterophylla Standley, Contr. U. S. Nat. Herb. 18: 95
1916.
Iresine celosioides obtusifolia Coult. Contr. U. S. Nat. Herb. 2: 364. 1894. Iresine paniculata obtusifolia Coult.; Uline & Bray, Bot. Gaz. 21: 354. 1896.
Perennial from long slender branching woody rootstocks; stems herbaceous, stout, -erect or ascending, solitary or several from a single base, simple up to the inflorescence, 5-10 dm. high, swollen at the nodes, often sulcate, shortvillous at the nodes and sparsely pubescent PART 2, 1917] AMARANTHACEAB 167
elsewhere with very short stout soft hairs, the internodes 1.5-10 cm. long; leaves usually asymmetric, very variable in outline, the lower ones much broader and more obtuse than the upper ones; petioles stout, 2-20 mm. long, the uppermost leaves usually sessile or subsessile; blades of the lower leaves broadly rhombic-ovate, often as broad as long, frequently with fascicles of small leaves in the axils, 3-6 cm. long, 2-4 cm. wide, rounded to acutish at the apex, rounded or abruptly acute at the base and more or less decurrent, thick and firm, yellowishgreen, scabrous or smooth on the upper surface, pubescent beneath along the veins with short stiff hairs, scabrous and denticulate on the margins, the veins prominent beneath, coarse, the lateral ones diverging at a very acute angle, nearly parallel and all extending more than half way to the apex; blades of the upper leaves ovate to narrowly ovate or oval, obtuse or acute, smaller than the lower blades but with similar pubescence; inflorescence a narrow, dense, much branched panicle, 1.5-4 dm. long and 3-9 cm. broad, the branches erect or ascending, sparsely villous; spikelets stout, densely flowered, 4-23 mm. long; bracts one half to one third as long as the sepals, ovateorbicular, acute, entire; sepals 1—1.3 mm. long, elliptic-oblong, yellowishwhite, acuminate to acutish, those of the pistillate flowers 3-nerved; lobes of the staminal cup broadly rounded; utricle shorter than the sepals; seed suborbicular, 0,6 mm. in diameter, dark reddish-brown, shining.
Type locality : Near the city of Durango, Mexico.
Distribution: Dry rocky hillsides, western Texas to southern Arizona and Sonora, and southward to central Mexico.

Iresine heterophylla, or Standley's bloodleaf, is a plant species native to the southwestern United States and also to Mexico. It has been collected from Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Chihuahua, Sonora, Durango, Coahuila, Nuevo León, Campeche and Tabasco.

Iresine heterophylla is a perennial herb up to 100 cm tall. Leaves are opposite, ovate, up to 6 cm long. Flowers are arranged in a rather large, branching panicle up to 40 cm long. Flowers are small, white to straw-colored, up to 4 cm across, covered in dense woolly hairs. Fruits are green, egg-shaped, usually less than 1 mm across, enclosed inside the persistent flower parts which are in turn enclosed in woolly hairs, so that the infructescence as a whole appears white and woolly.