Helianthus bolanderi

Bolander's sunflower

Family: Asteraceae · Type: annual · Native

Bolander's sunflower is a California native annual found in the Klamath Ranges, northern California Coast Ranges, California Ranges, Sierra Nevada Foothills, Central Valley, central western, and western Transverse Ranges in grassy, often disturbed places and gravelly stream sides at elevations below 1,800 meters. Flowering from June to October, this plant produces yellow ray flowers 14 to 20 millimeters long with disk flowers featuring distinctive red-purple lobes in heads 15 to 25 millimeters in diameter. Growing 10 to 150 centimeters tall with rough-hairy stems, it develops most leaves alternately positioned along the plant. Its leaves range from narrowly lance-linear to ovate, 3 to 15 centimeters long, with wedge-shaped to truncate bases and margins that are nearly entire to slightly serrated. The fruit is small, measuring 2.7 to 4.5 millimeters long with pappus scales 1.7 to 3 millimeters in length.

Habitat: Grassy, often disturbed places, gravelly stream sides, sometimes on serpentine

Bloom period: Jun-Oct

Elevation: < 1800 m

Bioregions: KR, NCoR, CaR, SNF, GV, CW, WTR

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