Sweetbush

Bebbia juncea, the sweetbush or chuckwalla's delight, is a rounded, broom-like, much-branched shrub or subshrub of the Asteraceae native to the deserts of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. Plants reach 0.5-1.5 m tall and as wide, with slender, rush-like, green, grooved, almost leafless stems that perform much of the photosynthesis. The few opposite, lower leaves are narrowly linear to filiform, 1-4 cm long, soon deciduous in dry conditions. Solitary, sweetly fragrant, golden-yellow flower heads about 12-18 mm across are produced on long, slender peduncles at the branch tips through much of the warm season; each discoid head contains only tubular florets — there are no ray florets — and is subtended by a series of narrow, green, often somewhat reflexed phyllaries. The achenes are silky-hairy and crowned by a pappus of plumose bristles. It inhabits dry washes, gravelly slopes, rocky canyons, and roadsides in the Sonoran, Mojave, and Chihuahuan deserts, often forming conspicuous mounds.