Silene lemmonii

Lemmon's catchfly

Family: Caryophyllaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Lemmon's catchfly is a native perennial herb found in northwestern California, the Cascade Range, Sierra Nevada, Santa Cruz Mountains, southern Coastal Ranges, Transverse Ranges, Peninsular Ranges, and Modoc Plateau in oak woodland and conifer forest at elevations of 850 to 2,800 meters. Flowering from spring to summer, this plant produces delicate yellow-white to pink flowers with 4-lobed petals 4 to 8 millimeters long, nodding gracefully on glandular stems. Growing 15 to 45 centimeters tall with decumbent to erect stems that are short-hairy below and glandular above, it develops a few caudex branches. Its leaves transition dramatically up the stem, with basal leaves elliptic to oblanceolate, 2 to 3.5 centimeters long and 8 to 10 millimeters wide, becoming progressively smaller and narrower toward the stem's top. The fruit is an oblong to ovoid structure carried on a short 2 to 3 millimeter puberulent stalk.

Habitat: Oak woodland, conifer forest

Bloom period: Spring-summer

Elevation: 850-2800 m

Bioregions: NW, CaR, SN, w SnFrB (Santa Cruz Mtns), SCoR, TR, PR, MP

California counties: Butte, San Bernardino, Trinity, Mariposa, Monterey, Placer, Plumas, Sierra, Tuolumne, Amador, El Dorado, Fresno, Humboldt, Kern, Lassen, Los Angeles, Madera, Mendocino, Orange, Riverside, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Shasta, Siskiyou, Tehama, Tulare, Ventura, Modoc, Calaveras, Colusa, Del Norte, Glenn, Lake, Mono, San Benito, Nevada, Napa

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