Botanical atlas

Thurber's Pilostyles

Pilostyles thurberi

Pilostyles thurberi has no known history in traditional herbalism, cooking, or folk medicine, and that absence is part of what makes it remarkable. It spends nearly its entire life hidden as thread-like strands woven through the stem tissue of desert shrubs in the pea family, most often Psorothamnus and Dalea species, drawing all its water and nourishment from its host like a plant-eating plant. The only sign it exists at all is a scatter of pinhead-sized flower buds that push up through the host's bark, looking almost like a rash or a cluster of tiny barnacles. Desert botanists and naturalists have long prized the rare sighting of it in bloom as a small, thrilling puzzle of the Sonoran Desert rather than a plant to gather or use.

Safety.

Pilostyles thurberi has no history of food or medicinal use and no safety data, so it should not be eaten or used as a remedy. It is also extremely rare and best left undisturbed in the wild.