Large flowers with yellow petals and long red stamens and pistils. The fruit, a large flat pod, explodes when dry and scatters its seeds. The plant is ill-smelling. This very common plant of the dry mesas, plains, and arroyos is often mistakenly called sage. It is a heavily branched, gray shrub with narrow, small leaves and dense panicles of one seeded fruits.
Flowers appear in mid-summer.
The plant is also called Four-Winged Salt Brush. Mountain Mahogany Widely branching small hardwood shrubs with small, inconspicuous, petal-less flowers. Seed has a long, spiral plume. Leaves turn orange-red in the fall. The plant bears berries about the size and color of wild grapes.