1st photo show habitus of a typical plant of Wahlenbergia marginata as found at this site...where plants were a bit taller and less densely-bushy then in some other curb-side stations I've seen in San Francisco.

2nd photo shows "zoomed-out" view relative to the 1st, giving a sense of the type of disturbed habitat...a cement and asphalt covered road median. The plant in the 1st photo appears at the junction of the hardscape cracks at center-right of the 2nd image.

The plant in the 3rd & 4th photos was pulled from the upper left corner of the lid for the utility box seen on the ground at bottom-center of the 2nd image. The plant was scraggly and somewhat disintegrated compared to many others present there, but that allowed for a less cluttered image showing structure of the stems. Plus the taproot was anchored in unusually pliant inter-crack soil, and I was able to remove a full 32 cm of it before the point where it broke from its very-narrowly tapered distal end.

Hand gives a visual scale, and the red clip-board gives an exact scale (also 32 cm...when the root was stretched straight it was virtually exactly as long as the clip-board!)