General Descriptive Remarks

More than 10 small Nemacladus plants can be seen in the full-size version of this photo, growing together on a rocky calcareous substrate at about 6900' elevation in the Inyo Mountains east of Big Pine, CA.

Each plant has a basal rosette (see image here) that appears to consist of 4 or more leaves attached to the stem base (actually the rosette is attached to a point just above 'ground level', as the stems may extend downward through rock crevices before the actual root-shoot anchors in soil...see this image). The rosette leaves appear to attach sequentially in a very tight spiral, with each consecutive point of attachment separated by ~90°. The leaves are small, ovate, pale-green in color (aging reddish or tawny)...with short, coarse, appressed hairs and entire margins. It appears that, typically, a single, erect, dark reddish-brown stem arises from the rosette and, in many of the plants seen here, soon forks into two zig-zag inflorescence axes. The numerous nodes along the inflorescence axes are fairly well-spaced (at least below the more congested growing tips) and each supports a small bract subtending (and very slightly enfolding) the base of a graceful, mildly 'S'-shaped pedicel...which ends in a single 'floral unit'. I use the term 'floral unit' here to refer to either a bud, an open flower, or fruit...depending on the phenology of the unit and, in particular, on its position along the inflorescence axis at any fixed time (that is, flower maturation here proceeds from the bottom of the inflorescence axis to the top, AKA ''indeterminate growth'').

The flowers (see images here and here) are 5-merous and the corollas campanulate (hhmmm...what family was this again? ;-)...with the fused basal portion of the corolla forming a bowl within the calyx, and the separate corolla lobes reflexed perpendicular to the bowl and exserted beyond the green calyx lobes. The corollas are irregular––though at a casual glance they can sometimes appear to be near radially symmetric...at least from some angles. It's as if a regular 5-merous petal pattern were drawn on a completely opened 360° circular fan...but then the two touching edges of the fan were rotated apart by an acute angle, carrying and slightly distorting the petal's shapes with them. Careful inspection of the flowers reveals a natural clustering of the 2 more widely-spaced lobes into an 'upper lip', and the other 3 lobes into a 'lower lip'. Note that the flowers here are considered 'inverted' in comparison to the 'typical' orientation for irregular Nemacladus corollas, where roles are reversed and it's the upper (or adaxial) lip that's 3-lobed & the lower (or abaxial) lip 2-lobed (cf. figures at the top of this Jepson eFlora illustration).

In all Nemacladus flowers, the stamen filaments are separate at base, but (moving upward) soon become fused into a relatively long tube which encloses the long style. The apex of the filament tube is bent, and beyond the bend the anthers form a ring (facing inward). The apical bend of the filament tube always points toward the 3-lobed lip of the corolla (whether the flower is inverted or not). During the flowering process, the anthers dehisce and release pollen (inwardly) before the style has entirely elongated and pushed through the top of the stamen tube. Eventually the style elongates completely...pushing the stigma out the top of the tube, at which point they become receptive. This process is similar to that of flowers in the family Asteraceae, and presumably allows ample opportunity for self-fertilization if the preferred outcome of out-crossed pollination by insects fails to occur.

Most Obvious Distinctive Aspects of this Taxon

Note that the color pattern of the flowers in this taxon is distinctive (again, see images here and here): the base color is white (often with a subtle, very slight, 'dirty' yellowish-to-brownish tinge near the apices of the lobes) and there are 3 short, red, radial stripes along the medians of the bases of the lower lip lobes. Those stripes can vary in the width but are usually conspicuous. Sometimes the other two lobes also have shorter, narrower such stripes present...but generally they're not nearly as conspicuous.

Rudimentary 'Taxonomic History, Status, & (Informal) Nomemclatural' Remarks

This is presently a ''known but currently undescribed'' taxon which, to the best of my knowledge, was first noted and collected by Steve Matson & Kathleen Nelson on June 19, 2010 near Badger Flat in the Inyo Mountains...see Steve's CalPhotos posts here. Recently, Martin Purdy posted photos on iNaturalist from the location here on May 9, 2019...which, in conjunction with my ongoing Nemoclado-philia/zeal (and theirs ;-), prompted us to get together and have a delightful visit at this site on May 22, 2019 in order to further study, discuss, admire and photograph this 'new' taxon...and hopefully help move along a path towards better understanding of its natural history.

I'm posting these photos here under the name ''Nemacladus undet'', so that they'll appear on a CalPhotos search page together with Steve's many photos from the same day, and also his 2010 images of the same taxon from Badger Flat...which is about 10 air miles (over mountainous terrain) to the south of the location here. After we left this spot I found more plants in flower along the edge of the wash just south of Waucoba Road where it meets the Harkless Flat road (i.e. I made a range extension of about a mile to the north! ;-). It would be interesting to gain more knowledge of the range of this species: does it extend throughout more of the Inyo Mountains? Perhaps into the White Mountains and/or beyond? Are there interesting elevation or habitat restrictions? And what about its flowering phenology? Or its pollination biology? Or its relationship to other Nemacladus taxa? These are just a few questions among many interesting ones that could be posed!

While the name ''Nemacladus undet'' has a certain charm to it, as well as admirable brevity...I'd suggest something like ''Nemacladus sp. nova 'Badger Flat' '' or ''Nemacladus sp. nova 'Inyo Mnts' '' as a more descriptive interim handle (and one having more specificity)...until an official (i.e. formally published) binomial name is available. (One could drop the 'sp. nova' part in vernacular speech ;-) If others have better suggestions...I'd love to hear them! Note: Nancy Morin, the Jepson & FNA author for Nemacladus, is well-into the process of writing up descriptions for this (and a number of other!) new species. In the meantime, the most commonly used informal name for this taxon is the ''Badger Flats morph'' (which is a member of the ''N. sigmoideus complex'').

Update 6/20/19:Regarding the range of the ''Badger Flat Morph''...I recently learned that it has also been found at the north end of the Inyo Mountains in the Westgard Pass area (by BJ Stacey on 6/3/2017) and at the south end of the Inyos in the Conglomerate Mesa area (by Maria Jesus on 5/30/19). It seems plausible that it may also be thriving at many stations in between...and perhaps beyond.

Postscript (4/25/20): This is now recognized as a new species, N. inyoensis, per the treatment in:

Nancy R. Morin and Tina J. Ayers 'NEW SPECIES AND A NEW VARIETY OF NEMACLADUS (CAMPANULACEAE, NEMACLADOIDEAE) AND A KEY TO THE SPECIES,' Madroño 67(1), 35-60, (23 April 2020). https://doi.org/10.3120/0024-9637-67.1.35