Manybristle Chinchweed

Pectis papposa generally flowers following summer monsoon rains in the desert of southwestern United States and northern Mexico. In favorable years, it becomes an aspect dominant, coloring wide areas of the desert with its bright yellow heads.

Annuals, 1–30 cm (often forming rounded bushes); herbage spicy-scented. Stems ascending, glabrous or puberulent. Leaves linear, 10–60 × 1–2 mm, margins with 1–3 pairs of setae, faces glabrous (dotted on margins with round to oval oil-glands 0.3–0.5 mm). Heads in congested or open, cymiform arrays. Peduncles 3–40 mm. Involucres campanulate to cylindric. Phyllaries distinct, linear, 3–8 × 0.5–1.7 mm (dotted with 1–5 subterminal oil-glands plus 2–5 pairs of submarginal oil-glands). Ray florets (7–)8(–10); corollas 3–8 mm. Disc florets 6–34; corollas 2–5.5 mm (weakly 2-lipped, glabrous or glandular-puberulent). Cypselae 2–5.5 mm, strigillose to short-pilose (hair tips curled, bulbous); ray pappi usually coroniform, rarely of 1+ awns or bristles 1–4 mm; disc pappi usually of 16–24, subplumose bristles 1.5–4 mm, rarely coroniform.

Pectis papposa Harv. & Gray; A. Gray, Mem. Am. Acad. II 4: 62. 1849.
Pedis tenella Rothr. Bot. Wheeler's Surv. 171. 1878. Not P. tenella DC. 1836. Pedis Palmeri S. Wats. Proc. Am. Acad. 24: 58, in part. 1889.
A slender j-eUowish-green annual ; stem dichotomous, with more or less spreading branches, 1-3 dm. high; leaves fleshy, filiform, 1-6 cm. long, 1-2 mm. wide, with 2-5 pairs of bristles near the base; glands conspicuous, marginal; heads in leafy cymes, subfastigiate ; peduncles 1-3 cm. long; involucre turbinate, 4.5-6 mm. high, 3-5 mm. broad; bracts 7-9, narrowly linear, strongly involute, strongly round-keeled and gibbous at the base, obtuse, with 3-7 conspicuous glands; ray-flowers 7-9; ligules 4-6 mm. long, 1.5-2 mm. wide; disk-flowers 1015; corollas 4-5 mm. long, the lobes lanceolate; achenes 4-5 mm. long, hispidulous or strigose; pappus of the disk-flowers of 12-20 short-plumose bristles, about 4 mm. long, or rarely reduced to a crown; that of the ray-flowers a short oblique crown of united squamellae, one or two of which are rarely produced into an awn.
Type locality: California.
Distribution: New Mexico to California, Lower California, and Sonora.

Pectis papposa is a species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae. It is native to North America, where it occurs in the southwestern United States as far east as Texas, and in northern Mexico. Common names include cinchweed, common chinchweed, many-bristle chinchweed, and many-bristle fetid-marigold.

This is a host plant of the beet leafhopper.