The photo above shows a close-up of a largely white-flowered specimen of dagger pod as seen along the Dalles Mt. Road in the Columbia River Gorge.................April 24, 2006.
Phoenicaulis cheiranthoides
Synonyms: Phoenicaulis cheiranthoides ssp. glabra, Phoenicaulis cheiranthoides ssp. heiranthoides, Phoenicaulis cheiranthoides ssp. lanuginosa, Phoenicaulis cheiranthoides var. cheiranthoides, Phoenicaulis cheiranthoides var. lanuginosa
Daggerpod is an attractive wildflower that would probably be suitable for a dryland rock garden. It is perennial with a basal rosette of oblanceolate leaves with entire blades that narrow gradually to the long, slender petiole. The leaves are 3-15 cm long and covered with numerous, fine to coarse hairs which range from cross-shaped to many-branched. The leaf margins are entire. The typically glabrous flowering stems are 5-20 cm tall and have several sessile leaves with heart-shaped, clasping bases. The stems may be erect or prostrate. The stem leaves are 5-35 mm long, lanceolate and narrow in breadth.
The inflorescence is a many-flowered raceme. The 4 sepals are pink or purplish in color and each is 5-6 mm long. The pedicels are 5-35 mm long and spreading while the reddish to purplish sepals measure 11-15 mm long. The pink to reddish-purple petals are obovate-oblanceolate in shape and measure 11-15 mm long. The anthers measure 1.5-2 mm long. The fruit is a broad, dagger-like silique measuring 2-8 cm long and 2-6 mm wide. The siliques spread outwards at right angles to the stem. The surface of the silique is glabrous with a prominent ridge found the length of the middle of capsule.
Daggerpod is found on rocky, thin soils from the sagebrush plains into ponderosa pine forests up to the cold, windswept ridgetops.
Daggerpod is found east of the Cascade Mts. in central Washington and Oregon. It extends eastward into neighboring Nevada and Idaho and south to the north Coast Range and Sierra Nevada of California.
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