Wild California poppy
Eschscholzia californica
California Poppy · Coastal areas Northern California · 26 April 2025
The true wild form of the state flower, growing here rather than sown in a bed: four silky orange petals around a ring of stamens and the starburst stigma that marks the genus. The flower closes at night and on dull days, and it was the orange hillsides that the Spanish sailors saw from the sea and called the land of fire. Picking it is not actually illegal, whatever every Californian child is told, though picking anything on state land is.
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