Silene parishii

Parish's catchfly

Family: Caryophyllaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Parish's catchfly is a California native perennial found in the southeastern Sierra Nevada Mountains, San Bernardino Mountains, and eastern Peninsular Ranges, including the San Jacinto Mountains, Santa Rosa Mountains, and Hot Springs Mountain in open, rocky to gravelly slopes and conifer forest at elevations of 1,800 to 3,350 meters. Flowering from spring to summer, this plant produces yellow-white flowers with distinctive petal lobes approximately 7 to 10 millimeters long. Growing with ascending to erect stems 10 to 40 centimeters tall, it has multiple branching caudex stems covered in short strigose or glandular hairs. Its leaves are lanceolate to slightly ovate, measuring 1.5 to 6 centimeters long and 5 to 15 millimeters wide, becoming slightly reduced toward the stem tips. The fruit is an ovoid to elliptic capsule with a short 2 to 3 millimeter stalk, containing small brown seeds about 1.5 to 2 millimeters in size.

Habitat: Open, rocky to gravelly slopes, conifer forest, alpine

Bloom period: Spring-summer

Elevation: 1800-3350 m

Bioregions: SnGb, SnBr, e PR (SnJt, Santa Rosa Mtns, Hot Springs Mtn).

California counties: Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside, San Diego

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