Botany Photo of the Day

Only north to Washington? I had always thought those yellow and orange flowers that popped up in my yard (here in Vancouver BC) every spring were California poppies.

Paul - I should have noted that I was writing about the native distribution of the plant (distribution map). As you correctly point out, it is found in southwestern British Columbia and western Washington state, but these are introduced garden escapees.

I like the color! Very nice.

I enjoyed the information about the California Poppy very much. My grandmother came from california and used to tell us about these flowers and how they covered the hillsides. The link to the feral flowers was sooooo beautiful!

I received the following email from Richard Dickey:

Hello Daniel,

I want to thank you for your wonderful weblog review about my website Feral Flowers. I appreciated it very much.

I'm working together with locals to hopefully deter planned development on two separate wilderness areas, the Gorman Hills area and only a few miles away the Tejon Ranch. Both pristine areas are home to what many consider the Holy Grail of all carpet blooms. They are located around 4000ft elevation in the high desert on the western most boundaries of the Mohave. This unique western location sometimes allows for more precipitation during the winter wet season. Occasionally snow blankets this area so the growing season begins early March and rapidly peaks in a frenzy mid April with the intensifying sunlight of spring at higher elevations.

Gorman Hills is dotted with artesian springs so a proposed bottled water tank farm with grading, pipes and water tanks would replace wildflowers and threaten sensitive wildlife.

Tejon Ranch is now owned by a NYC investment firm that wants to build a city in the desert. There is an interesting article about Tejon Ranch at this link. The author was unaware of the threatened wildflowers but mentions the California Condors.

I wanted to pass this info on to you in case others are interested in some specifics.

Thanks for your wonderful weblogs and please say thanks to UBC for me.

Best regards,
Richard Dickey

Some of the local groups involved: Save Tejon Ranch and Kern-Kaweah Chapter of the Sierra Club

I enjoyed feral flowers so much...It was a wonderful link. I viewed every picture and was just breathless each time.

Hi, does any one know how many carpels there are and what type of cymose inflorescence (simple or compound) the Eschscholzia californica has?

We have the same flowers here, but we call them Welsh Poppies.
Pat Allen
Cardiff
South Wales
United Kingdom