A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
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brittlebush
Encelia farinosa, a rounded desert shrub of the Sonoran and Mojave with silver-white leaves and, after rain, a haze of yellow daisy flowers held well above the foliage on long bare stalks. The whiteness is a coat of fine hairs that reflects light and cuts water loss, and the plant grows a thinner or thicker coat depending on how dry the year is. The stems snap cleanly, which is the name.
Etymology
Brittle is from Old English by way of a Germanic root meaning to break, related to the same word behind brittle in every other sense. The Latin is about the surface: farinosa means mealy or floury, from farina, flour — for that white bloom of hairs. The name worth knowing is the Spanish one. In Baja and Sonora it is incienso, incense, because the stems exude a clear resin that hardens into amber lumps, and that resin was burned in the mission churches.
Notes
The resin was also chewed and used to seal pottery and to ease pain. Brittlebush is one of the first things to green up and flower after a wet winter, and a good year turns whole bajadas yellow along the highways.