Arizona Plant Festival 2020
Arizona Plant Festival 2020

BRITTLEBUSH | Encelia farinosa

Kristi Maxwell

Encelia farinosa, or, Should a lid be lent to

extend preservation, the eye need not be asked


Brittlebush, which pushes its flowers out

as if gambling with an eye: gold coins,

the fist-shaped shrub brightened with a load of them;

brittlebush, which leads to bristle and brush,

teeth taken care of, its resin a prince

holding court in a mouth, rinsed and keeping white

despite its yellowed bloom. The brittlebush

a little bush compared to taller things.

Leaves, not left alone, but a home

to many short hairs, shorting the air

of moisture, hoarding it. Few mouths bore

through the body of the brittlebush,

though boarded often enough. A hover fly

here in spite of the spider that hopes to have it,

to make it hoverless, post-coveting.

Unendangered and to the desert endeared,

brittlebush’s placement engineered to smear out erosion

near highways—itself a burning bush when made

to burn for noses, urns that they are, to store.

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ABOUT BRITTLEBUSH

Habitat

 Dry and rocky places, such as gravelly roadsides, desert floors, and hill slopes. 

Description

 A stalky, exuberant shrub of yellow flowers in the sunflower family. The leaves are a pale gray-green-silver. The plant blooms primarily in spring. 

“Brittlebrush” by Kristi Maxwell from The Sonoran Desert, A Literary Field Guide edited by Eric Magrane, Christopher Cokinos, and Paul Mirocha. © 2016 the Arizona Board of Regents. Reprinted by permission of the University of Arizona Press.

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