Dicentra uniflora

Steer's head, Steer's Head

Family: Papaveraceae · Type: perennial · Native

Steer's head is a California native perennial found in the Klamath Ranges, northern Coast Ranges, high Cascade Range, Sierra Nevada, and North Coast Mountains in gravelly or rocky areas at elevations of 1,000 to 3,300 meters. Flowering from May to July, this plant produces delicate white to pink or lavender flowers with distinctive nodding blossoms, where the recurved tips of the outer petals extend more than half the petal length and inner petals have purple tips. Growing with a compact tuberous habit, the plant reaches only 3 to 7 centimeters tall, creating a diminutive and charming appearance. Its leaves are finely divided, with 1 to 3 intricate ternate-dissected leaves spreading 4 to 7 centimeters, each leaf complex and lacy in structure. The plant produces a small conic fruit 9 to 14 millimeters long, completing its elegant lifecycle in high mountain habitats.

Habitat: Gravelly or rocky areas

Bloom period: May-Jul

Elevation: 1000-3300 m

Bioregions: KR, NCoRH, CaRH, SNH, MP

California counties: Fresno, Nevada, Plumas, El Dorado, Mono, Mariposa, Shasta, Placer, Sierra, Tulare, Modoc, Tuolumne, Alpine, Butte, Lassen, Madera, Mendocino, Siskiyou, Calaveras, Glenn, Tehama, Trinity, Humboldt, Colusa

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