DESCRIPTION
This cutie annual from California grasslands & chaparral is often overlooked, which is too bad. The spike of white flowers develops into charming, green, flat seedpods with lacy edges that look like the doilies your grandmother kept on the back of her sofa cushions. Blooming March through May from a rosette of grassy leaves, Thysanocarpus comes from the Greek word thusanos, which means “fringed” & karpos, which means “fruit” referring to the fringed-edge seedpods. The seeds are edible if parched or they can be ground up & combined with flour. To 1-2’ tall and 1’ wide.
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Thysanocarpus radians is a species of flowering plant in the mustard family known by the common name ribbed fringepod. It is native to northern and central California and Oregon, where it grows in moist meadows, fields, hillsides, and other habitat. It is an annual herb growing up to 50 or 60 centimeters tall. The leaves are wavy-edged or lobed, the basal ones up to 5 centimeters long and ephemeral, and the upper ones with bases clasping the stem. The inflorescence is a long, open raceme of small whitish or purplish flowers. The fruit is a flattened, rounded, disclike capsule which hangs from its pedicel. It measures up to a centimeter long and is hairless to quite hairy in texture. The flat wing lining the edge of the disc is ribbed with rays like the spokes of a wheel, a characteristic making it easily distinguished from other Thysanocarpus when it is in fruit.
