Search / Plant Profile / Ditaxis aphoroides

Plant Profile

Hill Country Wild Mercury (Ditaxis aphoroides)

Global Rank: G2 - Imperiled
Legal Status: N/A
Family: Euphorbiaceae
State: TX
Nature Serve ID: 145302
Lifeform: Forb/herb
Date Inducted in National Collection:

Description:

A perennial herb, up to 5 dm tall, covered with grayish, soft hairs. Elongated clusters of flowers bloom from April to June.

Where is Hill Country Wild Mercury (Ditaxis aphoroides) located in the wild?

Habitat:

Open grasslands associated with oak-juniper woodlands. Mostly on rolling uplands. Soils are clay loams over limestone.

Distribution:

Endemic to the Edwards Plateau in central Texas: Bandera, Blanco, Brown, Caldwell, Comal, Gillespie, Guadalupe, Hays, Kendall, Kerr, Menard, Mills, Tom Green, and Uvalde counties. Possibly extirpated

States & Provinces:

Hill Country Wild Mercury can be found in Texas

Which CPC Partners conserve Hill Country Wild Mercury (Ditaxis aphoroides)?

Botanical Research Institute of Texas / Fort Worth Botanic Garden

Not Sponsored

Assigned 06/09/17

CPC's Plant Sponsorship Program provides long term stewardship of rare plants in our National Collection. We are so grateful for all our donors who have made the Plant Sponsorship Program so successful. We are in the process of acknowledging all our wonderful plant sponsorship donors on our website. This is a work in progress and will be updated regularly.

Conservation Actions

Kim Taylor

05/31/2017

Grazing, habitat destruction by ranchers for livestock, housing and recreation development (NatureServe 2017)

Kim Taylor

05/31/2017

Individuals in 7 unprotected populations (some on highway right-of-way areas); 7 historic populations.

Nature Serve Biotics

05/02/2017

Endemic to the Edwards Plateau in central Texas. About 20 occurrences are known (probably fewer than 10,000 plants in total).