Semi-desert. Woodlands, openings. Spring.
Behind the Rocks, Utah, April 3, 2006.

Zuckia brandegei occurs in all Four Corners states (and Wyoming).  Stanley Welsh, the Utah plant authority, indicates that Zuckia is "dioecious or less commonly monoecious", but detailed field studies by Pendleton et al. of the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station indicates that the plants are primarily, perhaps exclusively, monoecious.  The research further indicates that Zuckia exhibits an unusual flowering technique that promotes cross pollination: each plant matures its male and female flowers at different times.  About half the Zuckia brandegei shrubs in a given area initially open all their male flowers.  At the same time, other nearby Zuckia shrubs open only their female flowers.  After this flowering, the roles are reversed: the female flowers on the first shrubs open and the male flowers on the other shrubs open.  (For further details see "Gender specialization in heterodichogamous Grayia brandegei (Chenopodiaceae): evidence for an alternative pathway to dioecy".)  

Zuckia occurs in rocky to sandy loose soils, primarily in the canyons of the Colorado and San Juan Rivers.  It is common to find it growing in the shade of tall shrubs and Oaks.

Townshend Brandegee collected this species in 1875 on the Hayden Expedition that explored Southwest Colorado.  The plant was collected, in Brandegee's words, "at the most western topographical station, San Juan Valley, 3,200 feet". (This information is in Brandegee's 1876 Hayden Survey Report entitled, "The Flora of Southwestern Colorado".  The elevation of "3,200 feet" is probably in error since the San Juan River joins the Colorado at about 3,700 feet in south-central Utah.  More than likely Brandegee collected the plant in eastern Utah at about 4,500 feet.)  (More biographical information about Brandegee.)

In 1876 Asa Gray named this species Grayia brandegei but, according to Stanley Welsh, Gray was not convinced that the genus designation was correct.  In 1984 Welsh placed the plant in the Zuckia genus which had been named by Paul Standley [(1884-1963) famed Smithsonian and Chicago Field Museum botanist] to honor Myrtle Zuck Hough (1880s?-1940s?) of Holbrook, Arizona and author of "Plant Names of the Southwestern United States".

Semi-desert. Woodlands, openings. Spring.
Behind the Rocks, Utah, April 3, 2006.

Semi-desert. Woodlands, openings. Spring.
Behind the Rocks, Utah, April 3, 2006.

Semi-desert. Woodlands, openings. Spring.
Behind the Rocks, Utah, April 15, 2008.
Behind the Rocks, Utah, April 3, 2006.

Flowers and developing seeds.