Tiehm’s Buckwheat
Tiehm’s Buckwheat grows on a few Nevada clay outcrops and nowhere else, making soil chemistry—not scenic grandeur—the key to recognizing its world.
Artwork inspired by Robert Cole Caples
This perennial is restricted to unusual pale soils at Rhyolite Ridge, where low cushions endure cold, drought, wind, and nutrient conditions few plants tolerate. Its tiny global range overlaps valuable lithium and boron deposits, placing conservation, energy transition, mining design, and irreplaceable habitat in direct tension.
The population is not a casual wildflower destination. Learn it through official photographs and public conservation information rather than seeking coordinates or walking the outcrops. If encountered during authorized work, remain on established routes, avoid dust and soil disturbance, and never collect plants or seed.
- Global range
- A few acres
- Federal status
- Endangered
- Primary pressure
- Mineral development
Quick guide
- Whole-form evidence
- Low cushion form
- Second mark
- Silvery rounded leaves; habitat—Highly specialized lithium-boron-rich clay soils on a small set of ridges at Rhyolite Ridge
How to verify Tiehm’s Buckwheat in the field
- Recognize
- Look for low silvery cushions and tight flower clusters on pale clay.
- Understand
- Connect the plant to one specialized soil, not Nevada desert generally.
- Separate
- Do not identify other buckwheats from flower color alone.
- Protect
- Do not seek, enter, collect, or publish sensitive population locations.
Good to know
This card is for recognition and conservation context, not visitation. Exact population locations are sensitive, access may be restricted, and a footprint or vehicle track can damage habitat that exists nowhere else.
Notice these
- Low cushion form
- Silvery rounded leaves
- Pale specialized soil