Racemes: terminal cluster of sterile flowers pale yellow or purplish. Flowers: sepals of fertile ones greenish yellow or purplish; petals lemon yellow or yellowish white. Fruit valves moderately to densely hispid. 2n = 28. Flowering Apr-May. Serpen- tine outcrops in arid grassland, oak woodland; of conservation concern; 200-900 m; Calif. Subspecies lyonii is known from Merced County.

Kruckeberg and Morrison described subsp. lyonii based on plants with an exclusively greenish yellow terminal cluster of sterile flowers, and discussed a sympatric form with greenish yellow sepals and a purple terminal cluster as a `bicolor´ form. Subsequent collections show that plants with only a greenish yellow terminal sterile cluster are absent in some years, and the `bicolor´ form is here included in subsp. lyonii.