Desert-holly is a compact, rounded shrub with white-scurfy herbage growing to about 3-1/2' high. The numerous alternate leaves are what gives it its common name, being widely ovate to round, silvery and somewhat thickish, up to 1-1/2" long and petioled, but sharply and irregularly dentate like a holly leaf. Desert-holly is a dioecious species with male and female plants on separate plants. The staminate flowers are in short dense glomerules or leafy paniculate spikes, bractless, apetalous, and with a several-parted calyx. The pistillate flowers are in short dense spikes and are composed of only an ovary with two stigmas enclosed within a pair of bracts on short stalks. When mature, the fruit is strongly compressed, round to reniform, sometimes slightly crenate and reticulate-veined. Desert-holly is usually to be found on alkaline soils but on hilly and rocky areas and in canyon washes rather than lower flats. It is present in creosote bush scrub and blooms from January to April.  You can see and "taste" this plant on our San Andreas Fault Tour! Some folks call it the potato chip plant! You have to taste it to see for yourself!