Calycadenia pauciflora

Small flowered calycadenia

Family: Asteraceae · Type: annual · Native

Small flowered calycadenia is a California native annual found in northern Coast Ranges and Sacramento Valley in open, dry rocky meadows and foothill woodland openings at elevations of 50 to 1,100 meters. Flowering from April to September, this plant produces white flowers that age to pink, with delicate ray flowers 5 to 7 millimeters long in small heads. Growing with slender, flexible stems 10 to 40 centimeters tall that branch in a fan-like pattern and often zigzag, it has a distinctive branching habit. Its leaves are 1 to 5 centimeters long on the lower stems, with fine, sparse hairs. The fruit features disk flowers with alternating long and short pappus scales, creating a unique seed dispersal mechanism.

Habitat: Common. Open, dry, generally rocky meadows, hillsides, openings in chaparral, foothill woodland

Bloom period: Apr-Sep

Elevation: 50-1100 m

Bioregions: NCoRI, ScV.

Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.