Persicaria maculosa

Lady's thumb, Lady's Thumb

Family: Polygonaceae · Type: annual · Not Native

Lady's thumb is a naturalized annual found in California in moist disturbed areas and fields at elevations below 1,500 meters. Flowering from June to November, this plant produces pink or rose flowers in small clusters 7 to 12 millimeters wide. Growing with prostrate to erect stems 10 to 70 centimeters tall, it often has a distinctive dark blotch on its lance-shaped leaves. Its leaves are 5 to 10 centimeters long with tapered bases and acute tips, featuring light-brown cylindric ocreae with short bristly margins. The fruit is a shiny, smooth, lens-shaped seed 2 to 2.7 millimeters long that turns brown-black when mature.

Habitat: Moist disturbed areas, fields

Bloom period: Jun-Nov

Elevation: < 1500 m

Bioregions: CA

California counties: San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Los Angeles, Ventura, Plumas, Modoc, San Mateo, Alameda, Alpine, Amador, Glenn, Inyo, Lake, Lassen, Madera, Merced, Monterey, Napa, Placer, San Bernardino, Santa Clara, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Shasta, Sierra, Solano, Sutter, Tehama, Trinity, Yuba, Butte, Calaveras, Del Norte, El Dorado, Humboldt, Kern, Marin, Mariposa, Mendocino, Nevada, San Francisco, San Joaquin, Siskiyou, Sonoma, Tuolumne, Sacramento, Colusa, Contra Costa, Riverside, Imperial, Yolo, Tulare

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