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The Umbel JournalWild buckwheats of the American West

An independent field journal on the wild buckwheats, genus Eriogonum, and the dry gardens of the American West.

The wild buckwheats of the American West, read closely

Some two hundred and fifty species of Eriogonum hold the dry hills together, from the sagebrush basin to the Channel Islands: what they are, how to name them, how to grow them, and who lives on them.

A wide sagebrush hillside in early summer covered with low cream flowered shrubs under a high blue sky, distant mountains, warm morning light
A wide sagebrush hillside in early summer covered with low cream flowered shrubs under a high blue sky, distant mountains, warm morning light

Three notebooks

The journal opens in three directions

Each notebook is an index of its entries. Start with the plants themselves, the gardens that grow them, or the living world around them.

Notebook I

Field Guide

What the genus Eriogonum is, how to read a wild buckwheat on a hillside, and close portraits of the species hikers and gardeners meet first.

5 entries inside

Notebook II

Dry Gardens

Seed patience, gravel and restraint: raising buckwheats from seed, planting through the first summer, and the light shearing that keeps a dome tight.

3 entries inside

Notebook III

People and Pollinators

The bees, butterflies and hummingbirds that work the dry season heads, and the society and the botanists who mapped every species.

3 entries inside

Recent entries

From the journal

Every entry the journal has published so far, newest notebook first: a portrait, a method or a life, each with its own photograph.

  • Field Guide

    A low spreading desert shrub covered in round clusters of tiny cream flowers above grey felted leaves on dry gravelly ground

    What is a wild buckwheat?

    Wild buckwheats are the genus Eriogonum, some 250 western North American shrubs and perennials with tiny flowers in cups, cousins of the pancake grain.

    The genus, its family, its range, and the cousin that makes pancake flour.

  • Field Guide

    A hiker crouched on a rocky trail examining a small white flowered shrub with a notebook in hand in morning light across a desert valley

    Identifying wild buckwheats in the field

    A practical method for naming a wild buckwheat on a walk: read the involucre, count the flowers, feel the leaves, note the habitat, then reach for the flora.

    Involucre, flower count, leaf feel, habitat: a routine that names most walks.

  • Field Guide

    A dome shaped mountain shrub with flat clusters of small sulfur yellow flowers turning rust red at the edges beside granite boulders and pines

    Sulfur buckwheat, Eriogonum umbellatum

    Sulfur buckwheat makes a flat dome of yellow heads that rust with age over felted leaves, asks no summer water, and feeds the last butterflies of the season.

    The flat dome of yellow that rusts with age, on no summer water.

  • Field Guide

    A chaparral slope in southern California covered with rounded pale pink flowered shrubs among dry tan grass in hazy afternoon light

    California buckwheat, Eriogonum fasciculatum

    California buckwheat carries the chaparral year on pale heads that go from pink white to rust brown, feeds bees through the dry months, and asks only sun.

    Pale heads from pink white to rust brown, carrying the chaparral year.

  • Field Guide

    A tall pale grey shrub with very large flat heads of minute white flowers standing over coastal bluffs with ocean fog in the distance

    Saint Catherine's lace, Eriogonum giganteum

    Saint Catherine's lace is the tree buckwheat of the Channel Islands, a grey fountain that carries dinner plate heads of cream flowers above dry garden gravel.

    Dinner plate heads of cream on the grey fountain of the Channel Islands.

  • Dry Gardens

    Hands sowing small dark seeds into paper pots filled with gritty soil on a potting bench in a greenhouse with a watering can nearby

    Growing wild buckwheats from seed

    Buckwheat seed asks for after-ripening, a fall sowing in gritty soil and patience with slow, uneven germination, from collection to pricking out.

    After-ripening, fall sowing in gritty soil, and germination in its own time.

  • Dry Gardens

    A gloved gardener settling a small grey leafed shrub into a mound of gritty soil beside a shovel in soft autumn light

    Planting a dry garden that survives year one

    Most dry garden plants die in the first summer, not the first winter: plant cool, mound for drainage, mulch with gravel and water deeply but rarely.

    Plant cool, mound for drainage, mulch with gravel, water deeply but rarely.

  • Dry Gardens

    Hands holding small shears tidying the rounded crown of a low flowering shrub with cut stems lying on gravel below in late light

    Pruning wild buckwheats so they stay compact

    A light shearing after flowering, never into old bare wood, keeps a garden buckwheat a tight dome of new wood that flowers again the next year.

    A light shearing after flowering, never into old bare wood.

  • People and Pollinators

    A native dark bee and a small blue butterfly feeding side by side on round clusters of tiny cream flowers on a dry hillside

    Buckwheats for bees, butterflies and late nectar

    When little else flowers in the dry months, buckwheats hold the nectar line: bees, blue butterflies that live on one species, and hummingbirds on the hills.

    Native bees, blue butterflies on one species, hummingbirds on the hills.

  • People and Pollinators

    A group of botanists with day packs examining plants along a desert roadside while one kneels with a hand lens

    The Eriogonum Society and its seed exchange

    Founded around 2009 and publishing today at eriogonum.community, the society runs the seed exchange where rare western buckwheats pass from hand to hand.

    The society, its meetings, and the seed exchange where rare species pass hand to hand.

  • People and Pollinators

    An old herbarium press and pressed plant specimens with handwritten labels on a wooden library table beside a magnifier

    James Reveal, the mapmaker of Eriogonum

    James L. Reveal spent a lifetime revising the genus Eriogonum into subgenera and varieties, the reference behind every wild buckwheat name a gardener meets.

    A lifetime spent giving the genus the structure behind every garden name.

The journal's method

Independent, sourced, in the third person

The Umbel Journal sells nothing and answers to no nursery and no society. Entries name their public sources in the text, state their own limits, and describe every organisation from the outside.

  1. Entries are written from public sources named in the text: regional floras, native plant society pages, reference works on the genus.
  2. Field advice states its limits: a journal page cannot see a reader's slope, soil or drainage, and says so where it matters.
  3. The Eriogonum Society, publishing today at eriogonum.community, and every nursery or organisation mentioned, are read in the third person, never as we.
  4. This domain carried the society's website from 2009 to 2022; old addresses with real subject matter are redirected to the closest entries, and the rest are retired.