The genus has been reexamined often and has had a number of its members placed into other Polemoniaceae genera: Giliastrum, Saltugilia, Navarretia, Ipomopsis, Aliciella, Allophyllum, Linanthus, etc.

     Ruiz and Pavon collected the first Gilia, Gilia laciniata, in Peru or Chile and they described it in their 1794, Prodromus Florae Peruvianal et Chilensis (A Preliminary Treatise on the Flora of Peru and Chile). 

     Ruiz and Pavon named Gilia for Filippo Luigi Gilii (1756-1821),  Italian clergyman and naturalist.  The species name should be pronounced with a soft g (as in the "J" of "Joe): "Gee-lee uh".  See Biographies of Naturalists for more information.

     More Gilia species.

This very slender Gilia has the typical Gilia basal rosette of leaves, tiny flowers that can range from white to blue to pink, and penchant for seemingly inhospitable, barren, hot ground.  It is very common, but because it is so slender it goes unnoticed and unappreciated.

The nomenclatural lineage of this plant is convoluted and disputed: It was collected prior to 1804 by someone, probably in America, grown from seed in England, and named Ipomopsis inconspicua in 1804.  Frederick Pursh renamed it Cantua parviflora in 1814, Rydberg named it Gilia inconspicua in 1904, August Brand named it Gilia ophthalmoides, in 1907, and it has  endured many other names in its two hundred year scientific history.  20th century Gilia expert, Verne Grant, accepted the name, Gilia ophthalmoides subspecies clokeyi.

Utah flora expert, Stanley Welsh, says, "...the large number of names is indicative of the variation within this and the other annual, small-flowered Gilias".

The species name, "ophthalmoides", is from the Greek for "appearing like the eye".

This blue-pink flowering Gilia will grow another four or five inches, flowering as it grows.  Gilia ophthalmoides' lower stem is often twice the diameter of the upper stem.  (The reddish vertical seed, which parallels the stem to its right, belongs to Erodium cicutarium.)

Notice the minute tack-like hairs on the stem.