California Poppy

Eschscholzia californica · Wildflowers

Wild 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.

California poppy, unfurling

Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 21 July 2024

A California poppy caught opening - not the hibiscus bud it was first written up as. The petals are wound into a spiral in bud and unwind as they open, which is what is happening here. The flat, pale rim under them is the receptacle, left behind when the pointed green cap that covers a poppy bud drops off in one piece. A hibiscus bud sits in a green calyx with a ring of bracts and shows none of this.

The wild plant is orange; this red with a yellow base is one of the garden colour forms, in the Botanic Garden's annual border.

California poppies

Goodnestone, 1 June 2024

Not native here, but naturalised enough in British gardens that it is easy to forget it isn't - a Californian wildflower doing exactly what it does at home, closing at night and on dull days and opening flat and orange the moment the sun is properly on it.

The bud is the odd part: a pointed green cap that lifts off in one piece as the petals unfurl, like a hat.