General: Beautiful Phacelia (Phacelia pulchella) is an annual forb that with small, bell-shaped purple flowers that bloom along a "scorpion tail," the curled flower stalk typical of Phacelias. The leaves are only slightly notched. The stames are short, not extending beyond the flower tube. Note that Phacelias have sticky, glandular hairs that some people react to in the way they react to poison oak.

Beautiful Phacelia is an annual with slightly notched leaves; corolla deciduous in fruit; leaf blades, especially lower, as wide as long; corolla 6–12 mm; stamens 2–10 mm; style 3–5 mm; plant with short-stiff-hairy, hairs not bulb-based; fruit 3–7 mm; seeds pitted, without cross-furrows; calyx lobes 2–5 mm, 4–9 mm in fruit; fruit ovoid; corolla widely bell-shaped, limbs generally wider than 5 mm.

Beautiful Phacelia is an uncommon component of vegetation communities in dry, well-drained gravelly and mud-hills areas on bajadas into the lower mountains in the Upper Sonoran (Mojave Desert Scrub) life zone.

Around Las Vegas, look for Beautiful Phacelia on Desert NWR and out in Gold Butte National Monument. While it is rare in Red Rock Canyon NCA, look for it on the south end of Blue Diamond Hill.

Family: Waterleaf (Hydrophyllaceae)