notes Note the color sequence of the corolla here: tube purple; throat yellow below, violet-blue above; limb pink. This, and the abruptly expanded throat, are among the crucial characters deciding for G. cana ssp. triceps here. But see the comments below more details! _________________________________
I often find Gilia quite challenging to identify to species, and I had previously placed this under G. latiflora ssp. davyi. But I'm now fairly sure this is Gilia cana ssp. triceps...after reviewing my images here, and carefully revisiting the keys and descriptions in the Jepson Manual keys, in Munz, and in the very detailed paper:
Grant, A. and V. Grant (1956). Genetic and taxonomic studies in Gilia. VIII. The cobwebby Gilias., Aliso 3:203-287.
Both G. cana and G. latiflora have a number of described subspecies, and some of the character states among these taxa are variable and in some cases overlapping...which can cause much confusion. The two species are separated in the Jepson key by whether the cauline leaves are 'clasping or expanded at base' (at couplet 4 in the 1993 key, and couplet 11 in the new key...leading to G. latiflora); or not clasping or expanded at base (couplet 4' in old key, and couplet 11' in the new key...leading to G. cana). I actually had a hard time interpreting this leaf base character here, and the plant in my photos fits fairly well with descriptions given for both taxa. My best attempt at the choice here is that the cauline leaves are not clasping or expanded at base. But regardless, the bulk of the characters (and in particular, the crucial color sequence for the tube-throat-limb of the corolla) all point to G. cana.
Furthermore, the location where this plant was photographed...Nemo Canyon, a few miles south of Emigrant Pass...appears to fit better with the Grant's range description for G. cana spp. triceps. This is also true for the specimen records from the California Consortium of Herbaria: compare this map of G. cana triceps records with this map of G. latiflora spp. davyi records. In particular, the closest CCH record for G. latiflora ssp. davyi is this record (a relatively northerly outlier), whereas there are more records for G. cana ssp. triceps in the general vicinity of the Panamint Mountains, the closest being this one.
Here's a summary of the salient characters which, taken together, lead me to place this as G. cana ssp. triceps:
Pollen blue; plants arachnoid woolly on lower stems and leaves; corolla tube short-exserted, purple; corolla throat without purple, yellow below and violet-blue above, abruptly expanded; cauline leaf-bases not significantly expanded or clasping; inflorescence lax, with long internodes, divaricate branches, and most the shorter pedicels more than half the length of the longer ones.
PS: In regard to the difficulties I had in IDing this, I took partial solace in reading the post-description remarks in the (now old) treatment of this taxon on pg 177 of the Intermountain Flora, Vol 4. That work simply lumped G. latiflora and G. cana! :-)
