page_title: Linanthus parryae
hierarchical_section_title: Linanthus parryae
caption_attribution_description: sand blossoms, Linanthus parryae, California, Glass Mountain, Benton Crossing Road, Owens Valley drainage, elevation 2228 m (7310 ft). One of those amazing desert annuals whose flowers outweigh the rest of the plant! Any of you familiar with this species will understand my astonishment at finding a healthy population of it this far north, and at apparent record-high elevation. Researching further, it has been found slightly farther north, in the Benton area of Mono County, but not this high. The population here was entirely of the white flowered form. The species also has a gorgeous blue-flowered form, and sometimes the two grow mixed, for example in Indian Wells Valley of the western Mojave Desert. Other than this narrow northward extension up the Owens Valley corridor into the Great Basin, the species is endemic to the western Mojave Desert, southern Sierra Nevada, southern San Joaquin Valley, and adjacent mountain foothills of southern California, mostly in sandy granitic soils below about 2000 meters (6600 feet) elevation.
context_page_description: Linanthus parryae is a species of flowering plant in the phlox family known by the common name sandblossoms. It is endemic to California, where it occurs in sandy, open habitat types in several regions from the Central Valley to the Sierra Nevada foothills and the Mojave Desert. This is a petite annual herb producing short stems just a few centimeters tall surrounded by hairy, needle-lobed leaves. The inflorescence, which often appears to sit directly on the ground tucked amidst the leaves, is a cluster of
  funnel-shaped flowers about a centimeter wide. The flowers are self-incompatible and are cross-pollinated exclusively by a Melyrid beetle, Trichochorous sp. Seeds germinate after winter rains in January to February, producing flowering plants in April and shedding seeds in May to June. Seeds are passively dispersed and remain viable for at least seven years, with no germination in dry years. The flowers on a plant may be white or blue. Flower color is mainly controlled by a single gene locus, with the allele for white flowers being recessive and the alleles of the blue flower being of the dominant type.
context_section_description: Linanthus parryae is a species of flowering plant in the phlox family known by the common name sandblossoms. It is endemic to California, where it occurs in sandy, open habitat types in several regions from the Central Valley to the Sierra Nevada foothills and the Mojave Desert. This is a petite annual herb producing short stems just a few centimeters tall surrounded by hairy, needle-lobed leaves. The inflorescence, which often appears to sit directly on the ground tucked amidst the leaves, is a cluster of 
  funnel-shaped flowers about a centimeter wide. The flowers are self-incompatible and are cross-pollinated exclusively by a Melyrid beetle, Trichochorous sp. Seeds germinate after winter rains in January to February, producing flowering plants in April and shedding seeds in May to June. Seeds are passively dispersed and remain viable for at least seven years, with no germination in dry years. The flowers on a plant may be white or blue. Flower color is mainly controlled by a single gene locus, with the allele for white flowers being recessive and the alleles of the blue flower being of the dominant type. Most populations have predominantly white flowers, with some populations mainly blue flowers, and some others with both blue and white flowered plants occurring at intermediate frequencies. The proportions of each color remain quite stable over time and in some locations there are sharp transitions from blue to white flowered populations. This uncommon phenomenon has made this species a model organism in studies of genetic variation.
  For many decades a long line of geneticists and botanists, including Sewall Wright, Carl Epling, Harlan Lewis and T. G. Dobzhansky, have studied populations of this flower to determine the factors that influence this polymorphism. Color frequencies may vary for many reasons, including genetic drift and pure natural selection. Wright built his isolation by distance and Shifting Balance theories on genetic drift in this flower using data collected by Epling and Dobzhansky in the Mojave Desert. More recent studies place greater emphasis on the effects of natural selection on color frequency.
caption: Sand blossoms, Linanthus parryae. Owens Valley, 2017
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