santa rosa basalt brodiaea

It is a perennial producing an inflorescence bearing bright purple flowers that turn white towards the base of the flower. Each flower has six spreading tepals with a center containing three stamens and staminodes, which are flat sterile stamens lying against the tepals. There is a large variation in the type of staminodes for this particular species where 10% of flowers may have no staminodes, 5-10% of flowers have short staminodes that curve backwards, and the remaining have long staminodes. The plant has corms which is how it reproduces. The overall differences in flower part lengths and pedicel length of the B. santarosae is potentially due to the surrounding plants in the area that it grows in which consist of tall grasses.

A concentration of B. santarosae can specifically be found in the Santa Rosa Basalt area which lies in Riverside County which is below San Bernardino County and above San Diego County. The flower grows between May and June in areas with elevation between 510 and 1050 meters. It is resilient to low water conditions and can even grow in disturbed habitats whereas the B. filifolia and B. orcuttii grow in habitats that are more wet. A loss of native habitat through the erosion of the Santa Rosa Basalt which has decreased by 97% is the main cause for its endangerment. There is approximately 15 k m 2 {\displaystyle }15km^{2} worth of basalt and the spread of where the flower grows is equivalent to this area and likely does not exceed this area.