Delphinium nudicaule

Red or orange larkspur, Red Or Orange Larkspur

Family: Ranunculaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Red larkspur is a California native perennial found in northwestern California, the Cascade Range, northern and central Sierra Nevada, Sacramento Valley, central western California, and northwestern Great Plains in moist talus and wooded rocky slopes at elevations below 2,600 meters. Flowering from March to June, this plant produces scarlet to orange-red flowers with distinctive forward-pointing sepals and long spurs 12 to 34 millimeters in length. Growing with slender stems 15 to 50 centimeters tall, occasionally reaching up to 125 centimeters, the plant has a root system more than 15 centimeters deep with distally branched structure. Its leaves are primarily located on the lower third of the stem, featuring 3 to 10 lobes typically wider than 6 millimeters and appearing nearly hairless. The plant produces curved fruits 13 to 26 millimeters long with smooth seeds featuring an inflated collar.

Habitat: Moist talus, wooded, rocky slopes

Bloom period: Mar-Jun

Elevation: < 2600 m

Bioregions: NW, CaR, n&ampc SN, ScV, CW (exc SCoRI), nw MP

California counties: San Luis Obispo, Sonoma, Plumas, Butte, Napa, Colusa, Trinity, Marin, Lake, Lassen, Mendocino, Monterey, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, Shasta, Tulare, San Mateo, Solano, Alameda, Del Norte, Siskiyou, Tehama, Humboldt, Glenn, Contra Costa, Modoc, Yolo, Sierra, Stanislaus, Sutter, San Francisco, Tuolumne

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