Collinsia heterophylla

Purple chinese houses

Family: Plantaginaceae · Type: annual · Native

Purple chinese houses is a California native annual found in various bioregions in grasslands, woodland edges, and open areas at elevations up to 1,600 meters. Flowering from March to May, this plant produces distinctive white and lavender to rose-purple flowers with striking wine-spotted upper lips tipped in dark violet and lower lips with darker red-tipped lower lobes. Growing 10 to 50 centimeters tall with branching stems, it develops lance-shaped leaves that are often deeply lobed in young plants. Its leaves are toothed and variable in shape, ranging from lance-like to deltate, with some leaves showing deep lobing in seedling stages. The flower's unique coloration features a prominent pouch-like corolla throat, with upper filaments that are noticeably hairy.

California counties: Los Angeles, Kern, San Luis Obispo, Amador, Tulare, San Bernardino, Orange, Riverside, Santa Barbara, Napa, Sacramento, Santa Clara, Lake, Monterey, San Diego, San Mateo, Fresno, Alameda, Ventura, Mendocino, Marin, Madera, San Benito, Solano, Santa Cruz, Nevada, Butte, Stanislaus, Mariposa, Tuolumne, Sonoma, Humboldt, Calaveras, Placer, Sutter, El Dorado, Colusa, Merced, Yuba, Tehama, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Joaquin, Yolo

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