Silene douglasii var. douglasii

Douglas' catchfly

Family: Caryophyllaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Douglas' catchfly is a California native perennial found in the Klamath Ranges, northern Coast Ranges, Cascade Range, Sierra Nevada, and Modoc Plateau in open areas, scrub, oak woodland, and conifer forest at elevations of 1,400 to 2,900 meters. Flowering during summer, this plant produces white to pink or pale purple flowers with delicate petal lobes. Growing 10 to 40 centimeters tall with decumbent to erect stems that are softly hairy, it develops a caudex with few to many branches. Its leaves are distinctively shaped, with lower leaves 2 to 6 centimeters long and 2 to 8 millimeters wide, lanceolate to oblanceolate, gradually becoming smaller and more linear toward the stem's upper portions. The fruit is an oblong to ovoid capsule borne on a short puberulent stalk.

Habitat: Open areas, scrub, oak woodland, conifer forest

Bloom period: Summer

Elevation: 1400-2900 m

Bioregions: KR, n NCoR, CaR, SN, MP

California counties: El Dorado, Placer, Alpine, Butte, Modoc, Nevada, Shasta, Tehama, Plumas, Sierra, Siskiyou

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