Glossopetalon

Glossopetalon is a small genus of shrubs in the plant family Crossosomataceae. These plants are sometimes called greasebushes. They are native to Mexico and the western United States, where they can be found on dry mountain slopes. These are usually small shrubs, although Glossopetalon spinescens can reach up to three metres in favoured locations. They have thorny, tangling branches and white flowers with petals that are easily shed, giving them an untidy appearance. G. pungens is not thorny, and is a vertically prostrate subshrub which is usually found as a small tangled mat of stems hugging sheer cliffs. Glossopetalon was described by the American botanist Asa Gray in 1853. Gray first placed his new genus in the Celastraceae family, but twenty years later thought it was most closely related to Staphylea, then in the Sapindaceae, and a few authors accepted this classification at the time (1880). Within two decades (1897), however, this genus was placed back in the Celastraceae again, ......read more on Wikipedia.