Fouquieria is a genus of about 10 species of desertplants in the family Fouquieriaceae, including the ocotillo (F. splendens) and the boojum tree (F. columnaris). They have succulent stems with thinner spikes projecting from them, with leaves on the spikes. They are unrelated to cacti and do not look much like them; their stems are proportionately thinner than cactus stems and their leaves are larger.
They are native to northern Mexico and the bordering US states of Arizona, southern California, New Mexico, and parts of southwestern Texas, favoring low arid hillsides.
They do not have a particularly close resemblance to any other sort of plants; they have variously been placed in Ericales, Violales, and their own order Fouquieriales.
External link
http://biodiversity.uno.edu/delta/angio/www/fouquier.htm, as of 2002-06-01
On the rapidly elongating young shoots, each leaf has an unusual type of petiole, in that tissues of the stem cortex become elongated and form the lower portion of the petiole.
Recent molecular studies of chloroplast DNA now tell us that the Fouquieriaceae family is probably most closely related to North American species of phlox (Polemoniaceae).
Fouquieriaceae, especially the species of ocotillo and boojum, are landmarks of our deserts.
Table 4. Percentage of trees from parsimony analysis of 2000 simulated data sets (100 for each of 20 examined root positions; see Materials and Methods) in which the root is placed between the taxa listed and the remaining taxa.
Henrickson, J. 1967 Pollen morphology of the Fouquieriaceae.
1969a Anatomy of periderm and cortex of Fouquieriaceae.
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