Lepidium fremontii

Identification

Description

Desert Alyssum is an one foot perennial that likes the conditions it's native to in the Mojave Desert from Mojave to Utah. It needs perfect drainage and full sun. The fragrant white flowers are on a plant that resembles a large garden alyssum. Desert Alyssum an excellent border plant for desert gardens. Use with 12" rocks and penstemons. The plants in the nursery die regularly when the temperature drops below 25 deg.(gives us fits). They do not seem to like wet soil when it's cold. They are native in areas that got down to -20 but the cold there is only down for a few hours and the ground doesn't freeze to low temperatures,i.e. the ground temperatures stay around 32 when the air temp. is -20. One of our customers that has lived in the upper desert for 40 years shocked me by telling me the Dec. cold of 1990 was the first time she had seen the ground freeze and that was only an inch or so. Their air temp. went to 0 with open ground but it warms up so much during the day and the ground is so dry the cold does not penetrate well. We've had the ground freeze here to 12-18" before for weeks.

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