CA buckwheat ~ 06/09/11 ~ Pinnacles

California buckwheat
Eriogonum fasciculatum var. foliolosum
Polygonaceae

updated 09/10/14 - There are 4 var. of Eriogonum fasciculatum, and only 2 are reported for Pinnacles.  I'm pretty confident now that this is the greener foliolosum and not the fuzzy, grayer polifolium.  The original post is below:

Good golly! This is my best guess for buckwheat. At least I'm starting to familiarize myself with a few of the 268 Eriogonum species/varieties found in California. It's no wonder so many animals feed on buckwheats, including caterpillars of the bernardino dotted blue shown previous to this post. There's also a fun, mysterious arthropod peeking around the flowers in the second pic above.

The following Eriogonum names were taken from the 2005 Pinnacles plant list and the embedded links are for my future reference:

(CalPhotos) --- (Calflora) --- (Jepson)
angle-stemmed buckwheat --- E. angulosum --- chaparral
Coville's buckwheat --- E. covilleanum --- rock & scree
elegant buckwheat --- E. elegans --- riparian
long-stemmed buckwheat --- E. elongatum --- rock & scree
California buckwheat --- E. fasciculatum var. foliolosum --- chaparral
California buckwheat --- E. fasciculatum var. polifolium --- chaparral
graceful buckwheat --- E. gracile var. gracile --- chaparral
Pinnacles buckwheat --- E. nortonii --- rock & scree
nude buckwheat --- E. nudum var. auriculatum --- rock & scree
nude buckwheat --- E. nudum var. indictum --- chaparral
virgate buckwheat --- E. roseum --- rock & scree
rock buckwheat --- E. saxatile --- rock & scree
Wright's buckwheat --- E. wrightii var. subscaposum --- rock & scree