Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum Digital Library

Description

This devil's claw is a summer annual to 2 feet (60 cm) tall and two to three times as wide with large, ill-smelling, sticky foliage. The 1-inch (2.5 cm) flowers, purplish with yellow spots, are nearly hidden beneath the foliage. The distinctive fruit is typical of the genus.

Range

It is distributed in semiarid habitats from Arizona to Texas, south to central Mexico. Found mostly in disturbed soils, it's a common weed in agricultural areas.

Notes

The variety hohokamiana is a cultivar developed by the O'odham. It differs from the wild type in two important ways. The cultivar has claws up to a foot (30 cm) long with softer fibers. The black fibers in the claws are used in basket-making, especially by the Tohono O'odham. The longer, softer fiber in the domesticated claws are easier to work with. Secondly, the seeds of the cultivar are white instead of black, and lack germination inhibitors. While seeds of the wild type must lie in the ground for a couple of years before they will germinate, the white seeds sprout as soon as they get wet in hot weather and are thus easier to cultivate. This is one of the few plants domesticated north of Mexico, and this seems to have been accomplished only late in the last century. There is a theory that the introduction of cattle was the catalyst. Cattle will eat devil's claw plants, and O'odham women may have been forced to save seeds and grow them in more protected areas than previously. Among the saved seeds was a variant with longer claws and white seeds. The cultivar is now grown by more than 25 native cultures, some of whom live far beyond the natural range of the wild devil's claw.

The same Perdita bee that visits P. altheaefolia also visits the cultivar, but not the wild type of annual devil's claw. This is probably a result of the cultivar having paler flowers, which might be mistaken for the yellow flowers of the perennial species. The seeds and young fruits are edible.

In the tropical deciduous forest south of the Sonoran Desert is another species, Proboscidea louisianica fragrans (syn. P. sinaloensis) that looks the same vegetatively. But its larger, more colorful, and fragrant flowers are borne above the leaves. It ranges into the southeastern U.S.