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This is the most beautiful this field of pussypaws has ever been in the ~20 years I've seen it. Normally, gophers take out a large number of plants, but this year, so far, the number of predated plants in this particular field is minimal. In addition, the number of plants is vastly increased due to the good precipitation this year.

It has finally become clear to me that these plants are effectively annuals here. Year after year, the gophers eventually eat all the plants, including of course, the roots. I always wondered how the plants could come back after that. If they are functionally annuals, coming back from the seed bank, that solves that mystery, and accounts for the vastly increased number of plants this year.

Other similar areas nearby have not been so fortunate this year, and you can see where the gophers have taken out the plants in those areas.

This is a follow-up to the question posed by @vreinkymov in this post, about whether the roots look different for an infected plant compared to the roots of a non-infected plant:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/146921131

They don't appear any different. But I was surprised at how small the root system was compared to the above ground portion. That was perhaps due to extremely wet soil from 15 inches of rain so far this season.

The plants are numbered. #1 and #2 are infected. #3 and #4 are not, as far as I can see. Each photo after the first has only a single plant in it, identified by its number in the first photo.

Also, it appears that a plant can have some infected leaves and some non-infected leaves, as seen in plant #2.

These plants were all growing together, and I dug them all up with one hand-trowel scoop.

There are more infected plants in my yard now after mowing and another rain. So far I've found no infected plants in the as-yet-unmowed portion of my property, but that is consistent with chance since most of my property has been mowed. There are now something like five or six infected small areas widely scattered on my two acres.