Dicentra pauciflora
Few flowered bleeding heart
Family: Papaveraceae · Type: perennial · Native
Few flowered bleeding heart is a California native perennial found in the Klamath Ranges, northern California Ranges, and northern Sierra Nevada Mountains in open, gravelly areas at elevations of 1,200 to 3,000 meters. Flowering from June to July, this plant produces delicate white to pink or lavender flowers with distinctive recurved outer petal tips and purple inner petals. Growing as a small tuberous plant just 3 to 7 centimeters tall, it has a compact and diminutive form with intricate foliage. Its leaves are sparse, typically 1 to 3 in number, deeply dissected into 2 to 3 ternate segments spanning 4 to 7 centimeters. The plant produces slender fusiform to ovate fruits 10 to 15 millimeters long, characteristic of its unique bleeding heart genus.
Habitat: Open, gravelly areas
Bloom period: Jun-Jul
Elevation: 1200-3000 m
Bioregions: KR, CaRH, n&s SNH, WTR
California counties: Mariposa, Tulare, Fresno, Kern, Siskiyou, Ventura, Tehama, Trinity, Humboldt, Plumas, Yuba, Butte, Shasta
Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.