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Polygonaceae family

Heermann's Buckwheat Eriogonum heermannii

Native Specialist-bee host
Late-season nectar — Flowers in a late-autumn window when few other plants in our catalog bloom — valuable late forage for pollinators (relative to our catalog's bloom coverage).

Heermann's Buckwheat is a perennial shrub native to the lower 48 states. It blooms May – Oct. A host for pollen-specialist native bees.

More about this plant

Eriogonum heermannii is a species of wild buckwheat known by the common name Heermann's buckwheat. It is native to the southwestern United States from California to Utah where it grows on rocky slopes, desert flats, and dry washes. Wikipedia →

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
Cold hardiness (derived) — Hardiness
Hardiness
≥ zone 8 derived from its U.S. range
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Foliage
Lifespan
Perennial
Foliage
Broadleaf
In the garden
Shrub layer — Sits in the shrub 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 – Oct — 525 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 ~9 caterpillar species

Eriogonum supports ~9 caterpillar species.

Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is a modest genus.

Recorded feeding on Eriogonum in North America, including:

Callophrys comstocki · gossamer-winged butterfly ✦ Chalceria heteronea · gossamer-winged butterfly ✦ Euphilotes battoides · Square-Spotted Blue ✦ Euphilotes rita · Rita's Blue ✦ Anacamptodes fragilaria · geometer (inchworm) moth Aplectoides condita · Quivering Dart Moth
+ 8 more species →
Apodemia mormo · Mormon Metalmark Argyrotaenia citrana · leafroller moth Argyrotaenia franciscana · Orange Tortrix Aroga eriogonella · twirler moth Callophrys affinis · Western Green Hairstreak Callophrys apama · Canyon Green Hairstreak Callophrys dumetorum · Lotus Hairstreak Callophrys lemberti · gossamer-winged butterfly
Keystone count (genus-level) from Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use records. Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0). ✦ = recorded on this exact species.
✦ Bees specialist-bee host · 2 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. Eriogonum is a recorded specialist-bee host, so losing it can mean losing the bee that relies on it.

Xerces pollinator conservation →

2 native & managed bee species are documented visiting Heermann's Buckwheat :

Apis mellifera · Honey Bee Perdita subfasciata · mining bee · ✦ specialist
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)
Wildlife & visitors 4 nectaring

Open records of who else uses Heermann's Buckwheat — a generalist food-web signal, kept separate from the keystone Ecological Value.

Interaction records (observations, not exhaustive) from GloBI → (CC0). Counts are distinct species; names are the most-recorded. Common names from Wikidata (CC0).
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
Climate niche (heat tolerance & native rainfall) Derived

We take the plant’s U.S. county range and look up each county’s long-term climate, then summarise: native rainfall = the median annual rainfall across its counties; heat tolerance = the warm end (90th percentile) of average temperature across its range (mirroring how our cold-hardiness floor uses an extreme). Counties + medians blunt the roadside/observer bias that makes point-level climate unreliable. Needs at least five placeable counties.

Honest limits: A realized, sampling-biased niche (where it has been recorded, not its physiological optimum), and county climate is coarse — large Western counties span deserts and mountains. Derived guide, never a measured fact.

Realized-niche / climate-envelope approach (Pearson & Dawson 2003; Soberón 2007). Climate: NOAA NCEI nClimDiv county normals (1991–2020).
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 (21) 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 — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts · Smith et al. 2024 (CC BY)
[10] Conservation rank — NatureServe Explorer (CC BY)
[12] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[13] Climate niche — Derived — realized climate niche from U.S. county occurrences (GBIF) × NOAA NCEI county climate normals 1991–2020 (public domain)
[14] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[15] Wildlife & visitors — GloBI — Global Biotic Interactions (CC0)
[17] Bee specialists — Smith et al. 2024 (Zenodo, CC BY 4.0)
[18] Flower-visitor value (derived) — Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI
[19] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[20] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
[21] County range — GBIF Open Data — open-licensed occurrences (CC0/CC-BY) → county
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