Mohavea Genus

Mohavea is a small genus of just two species of annual wildflowers in the family Plantaginaceae, native to the hot deserts of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. The genus has historically been treated as part of the closely related snapdragon genus Antirrhinum, and some taxonomic arrangements continue to include it there; it was formerly placed in the family Scrophulariaceae before that family was reorganized and its members redistributed into Plantaginaceae and other families.

Both species are spring-blooming annuals adapted to arid desert conditions. Mohavea confertiflora, known as the ghost flower, produces large, pale cream to white flowers conspicuously marked with purple spots, giving the blooms a ghostly translucence. Mohavea breviflora, the lesser mohavea, bears smaller yellow flowers. The ghost flower is particularly noted for its mimicry relationship with Mentzelia involucrata, an unrelated desert plant whose flowers it closely resembles, thereby deceiving male oil-collecting bees into attempting pseudocopulation and achieving pollination without offering any reward.

The genus name honors the Mojave River in California, along which specimens were first collected by the American explorer John C. Frémont during his surveys of the American West in the mid-nineteenth century.