Annuals, 40-200 cm. Stems glabrous or glabrate (sometimes smooth when dry). Leaves: petiole 0.2-3.1 cm; leaflets 3, green, blade ovate or obovate, (0.4-)1-4.9 × 0.4-2 cm, 1.5-4(-5.5) times as long as wide, margins entire, apex acute to rounded. Racemes 1-1.5 cm (2-3 cm in fruit). Flowers: sepals green, lanceolate, 0.4-1.7 × 0.2-0.7 mm, more than 1.75 times as long as wide, margins entire, glabrous; petals yellow, oblong, 1.4-4.6 × 0.5-1.8 mm; stamens yellow, 2-6 mm; anthers 0.5-1.7 mm; gynophore (reflexed in fruit), 2-12 mm in fruit, usually shorter than pedicel. Schizocarps 1.2-3.3 × 1 mm. Seeds 0.5 × 0.3 mm. 2n = 40. Flowering spring-fall. Dry sandy flats, desert scrub, roadsides; 500-2400 m; Ariz., Calif., Nev., N.Mex., Tex., Utah; Mexico (Chihuahua, Sonora). Wislizenia refracta is known from trans-Pecos Texas, and from the Mojave Desert (San Bernardino County and Little San Bernardino Mountains in Riverside County) in California.

Plant: Annual or perennial herb, glabrous to puberulent; stem profusely branched from base, 0.5-24 dm Leaves: generally 1-palmate, generally alternate; petiole 3-25 mm; leaflets generally 3 INFLORESCENCE: raceme, 1-3 cm, dense, terminal, in fruit 4-20 cm; pedicels 5-10 mm Flowers: radial; sepals free, ± 2 mm, ± entire, green; petals 2.5-6.3 mm, elliptic, yellow, ± sessile but tapered to base; stamens 8-14 mm, yellow; ovary 0.3-0.6 mm, generally exserted, lobes 2, nearly separate, each generally 1-ovuled, style 2-5.5 mm Fruit: Fruit: nutlets 2; valves deciduous; receptacle stalk-like, reflexed; style elongate but not spine-like; Seeds generally 1 per nutlet Misc: Desert washes and flats, fields, roadsides, especially alkaline soils; 0-800 m.