Cordylanthus rigidus

Rigid bird's beak

Family: Orobanchaceae · Type: annual · Native

Rigid bird's beak is a California native annual found in California's interior mountain ranges in open grasslands and dry meadows. Flowering from May to September, this plant produces yellow flowers with distinctive maroon markings, with blooms 12 to 20 millimeters long featuring a white pouch. Growing 30 to 150 centimeters tall with yellow-green stems often tinged with red and appearing somewhat bristly, it develops a distinctive architectural form. Its leaves are slender and linear, often rolled inward, typically 10 to 40 millimeters long with occasional sparse lobes. The plant's compact flower clusters feature outer bracts 5 to 20 millimeters long, generally with three lobes, creating an intriguing structural appearance.

California counties: Kern, Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange, Fresno, San Diego, San Bernardino, Riverside, Santa Clara, San Luis Obispo, Monterey, Santa Cruz, Tuolumne, Santa Barbara, Mono, Mariposa, Sutter

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