Descurainia californica
Encyclopedia
Descurainia californica is a species of flowering plant in the mustard family
Brassicaceae
Brassicaceae, a medium sized and economically important family of flowering plants , are informally known as the mustards, mustard flowers, the crucifers or the cabbage family....

 known by the common name Sierra tansymustard. This plant is native to western North America from California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 to Wyoming
Wyoming
Wyoming is a state in the mountain region of the Western United States. The western two thirds of the state is covered mostly with the mountain ranges and rangelands in the foothills of the Eastern Rocky Mountains, while the eastern third of the state is high elevation prairie known as the High...

. It is a resident of varied habitats from mountain forest to sage scrub. This spindly mustardlike plant has a single thin stem which branches and may reach over half a meter in height. Its sparse leaves are divided into two to four pairs of dull green lobes each one to six centimeters long. The tiny bunched flowers at the tip of each stem are bright yellow. The fruit is a tiny podlike silique
Silique
A silique or siliqua is a fruit of 2 fused carpels with the length being more than three times the width. The outer walls of the ovary usually separate when ripe, leaving a persistent partition...

 on a straight pedicel
Pedicel (botany)
A pedicel is a stem that attaches single flowers to the main stem of the inflorescence. It is the branches or stalks that hold each flower in an inflorescence that contains more than one flower....

. Pedicels holding fruits stick out from the stem at intervals.

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