Eschscholzia caespitosa

Foothill poppy

Family: Papaveraceae · Type: annual · Native

Foothill poppy is a California native annual found in the California Floristic Province on open chaparral or grassy slopes at elevations below 1,800 meters. Flowering from March to June, this plant produces deep yellow flowers with occasional orange-spotted bases, 10 to 30 millimeters long. Growing 5 to 30 centimeters tall with an erect habit, the plant is glabrous and occasionally appears bluish-green. Its leaves are divided into segments that can be either obtuse or acute, with each flower stem subtended by a leaf. The slender seed pods reach 4 to 8 centimeters long, containing seeds that are elliptic to obovate, brown to black, and intricately net-ridged.

Habitat: Open chaparral or grassy slopes

Bloom period: Mar-Jun

Elevation: < 1800 m

Bioregions: CA-FP (exc KR, CaR, ChI)

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

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