Fringepod

Thysanocarpus curvipes, the sand fringepod or hairy fringepod, is a slender winter annual in the mustard family native to western North America, ranging from British Columbia south through California and Baja California into the Great Basin. It produces a single erect, wiry stem 10-60 cm tall, often branched above, with a basal rosette of pinnately lobed leaves and clasping, arrow-shaped stem leaves. Tiny four-petalled flowers, white to pale lavender and only 1-2 mm across, are borne in elongate terminal racemes in spring. The species is most distinctive in fruit: the silicles are flat, almost circular discs 4-8 mm across with a broad, papery, often perforated wing fringing the seed-bearing centre, giving rise to the common name. It grows on dry, open slopes, grasslands and disturbed ground below about 1500 m elevation.