Colorado Rubber Plant

This was a new plant for us when we botanized Horseshoe Canyon, near Drumheller on 13th June. I know - it's "just" another small, yellow flower, LOL!!!

"Plants are perennial, and tufted from a branching woody structure (caudex) atop a rather thin taproot. The thread-like leaves are branched, lie below the flower heads, and are covered with tiny resin glands. Mature plants usually have about 5-20 stems that each have 1-5 yellow flower heads about 3/4-inch wide. Fruits are tiny achenes about 1/8-inch long.

These "rubber plants" probably were so called because the Amerindians of New Mexico made chewing gum from the bark and roots.

Colorado rubber plant is a member of the sunflower family (Asteraceae) of which there are about 15,000 species worldwide. The generic name was compounded from the Greek humen "membrane" and oxys "sour", likely in allusion to the translucent scales at the base of the flowers and the sour or bitter taste of several of the species. Theodore Cockerell (1866-1948) published the first acceptable scientific description of the plant in 1904, long after its discovery by Sir William Jackson Hooker (1785-1865), who named the species in honor of the famous Scottish biologist and arctic explorer Sir John Richardson (1787-1865). Professor Cockerell was an intrepid student of the natural history of Colorado and New Mexico."

www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/plants/wildflwr/species/hymer...