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Polemoniaceae family

Wand Woollystar Eriastrum virgatum

Native Specialist-bee host

Wand Woollystar is an annual wildflower native to the lower 48 states. It blooms May – Jun. A host for pollen-specialist native bees.

More about this plant

Eriastrum virgatum is a species of flowering plant in the phlox family known by the common name wand woollystar. It is endemic to California, where it is known the coastline and coastal mountain ranges of Monterey and San Benito Counties. It grows in chaparral and coastal and inland scrub habitat. It is an annual herb producing a thin, usually woolly stem up to about 40 centimeters tall. The leaves are narrow and thick, up to 5 centimeters long, and sometimes divided into two narrow lobes. The inflorescence is a woolly cluster of narrow, leaflike bracts laced with webby fibers. The flowers have yellow throats and bright blue corollas with lobes up to a centimeter long. Wikipedia →

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
Cold hardiness (derived) — Hardiness
Hardiness
≥ zone 11 derived from its U.S. range
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
Lifespan
Annual
In the garden
Herb layer — Sits in the herb of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
derived roles
The garden year bloom → fruit → fall colour
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Bloom
Bloom (the flower's colour)
Bloom · May – Jun — 25 obs · Herbarium specimens — Park et al. 2023 (CC BY 4.0)
Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
❧ Caterpillar hosts Documented caterpillar host

Recorded feeding on Eriastrum in North America, including:

Schinia aurantiaca · owlet moth
Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).
✦ Bees specialist-bee host · 5 bee visitors

Specialist native bees depend on it.

Some native bees are pollen specialists (oligolectic) — they raise young only on pollen from particular plant genera. Eriastrum is a recorded specialist-bee host, so losing it can mean losing the bee that relies on it.

Xerces pollinator conservation →

5 native & managed bee species are documented visiting Wand Woollystar :

Perdita eriastri · mining bee Hesperapis rufipes · ✦ specialist Perdita pelargoides · mining bee Agapostemon texanus · Texas Agapostemon Anthidium jocosum
Specialist hosts from Smith et al. 2024. Visitor records (observations, not exhaustive) from Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI → · ✦ = pollen-specialist bee (Smith et al. 2024)
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
How we know this (1) Methods & honest limits
Photosynthesis Direct fact

A recorded categorical fact: each species is tagged C3 (standard), C4 (heat/water-efficient) or CAM (succulent, night-time CO₂ uptake) — or a facultative combination. We only show a trait card for the noteworthy C4/CAM cases; C3 is the unremarkable majority, kept in the data but not surfaced as a card.

Kattge, J. et al. TRY plant trait database — Categorical Traits Dataset (2012).
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →
Sources for this entry (18) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[05] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status
[07] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
[08] Ecological value — GloBI · Smith et al. 2024 (CC BY)
[10] Conservation rank — NatureServe Explorer (CC BY)
[11] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[12] Photosynthetic pathway — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[13] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[15] Bee specialists — Smith et al. 2024 (Zenodo, CC BY 4.0)
[16] Flower-visitor value (derived) — Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI
[17] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
[18] County range — GBIF Open Data — open-licensed occurrences (CC0/CC-BY) → county
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

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