fire poppy ~ 05/01/14 ~ Fort Ord

fire poppy

Papaver californicum
Papaveraceae

As we were driving out of Fort Ord, I spotted a few tall orange blooms in the fire break.  I mentioned to David Styer that I thought I saw some wind poppies, particularly since they were going at Pinnacles 2 days ago.  David has been monitoring blooms at Fort Ord on a near daily basis since 1996, and he's never recorded wind poppies before.  So, of course, we had to stop. Nope.  They're obviously fire poppies, which I was happy to finally see up close.  David was surprised to see them here.  He speculated that Fort Ord's fire break management practices created conditions that mimicked a fire.  I dunno if those rules about fire always hold true, because I have some young Monterey pines blocking my view of the Bay and there hasn't been a fire here in a very long time, if ever.  I'm guessing the crazy hot weather we're having caused these poppies to pop.

There's also some mistaken identity online, switching the fire and wind poppies.  They're really quite easy to tell apart up close.  Note the light color at the base of the fire poppy petals, compared to the dark base of the wind poppy petals.  Filaments (stringy stuff) match the petal base color in each flower, and both have yellow anthers (pollen ends).  Here are Jepson eFlora descriptions of P. californicum (fire poppy) and P. heterophyllum (wind poppy) for those who want to read up.  Oh, and those leaves close to the ground belong to poison-oak.

Speaking of fires...  last October there was a "controlled" burned for munitions removal on Army Lands as part of the transfer to existing BLM Lands/National Monument (I'm still not used to the new designation).  I say "controlled" because it did get out of control, but that's another story. Eh-hem.  Once again, BRAC is offering behind-the-scenes walking tours of the burned area on Saturday, May 17, 2014 (click the link to register).  David and his wife Jane will lead the guided nature walks with BRAC Cleanup staff.  Andy and I have gone the past 3 years.  I didn't blog about it last year, even though I took copious notes and photos.  There could be a ton of fire poppies, since the burn was just last year... or not.  The severe drought has thrown a big question mark into the spring wildflower predictions.  However, many plants are surprising us with their extremely quick vigor. Who knows what'll happen in 16 days' time?

ps 05/03/14 - David got a preview of the closed area for the tour and fire poppies are blooming.  Yay!

wind poppy ~ 04/29/14 ~ Pinnacles

wind poppy

Papaver heterophyllum

Papaveraceae

Last week, I think I only found 1 wind poppy, and this week, quite a few are showing up on shady slopes.  Wind poppies always seem to look a little wind blown to me.  The petals are so irregular.  They're surprisingly tall for such a small flower.  It's one of my favorites.

tufted poppy ~ 04/08/14 ~ Pinnacles

tufted poppy

Eschscholzia caespitosa

Papaveraceae

Now, these are not the famous California poppy (E. californica - I always have a hard time spelling Eschscholzia correctly).  The way I know is to look under the flower for a red ring.  If present, then CA poppy; if not, then good luck!  I already guessed these were tufted poppy, because that's just what they look like to me.  I'm not familiar with the miriad of other native poppies to know any differently. Maybe the folks in the Sierras are the ones that call this foothill poppy, but I've never heard that name actually used.  The tufted poppy is the one that gets everyone going gaga at Hite Cove near Yosemite.

As with the woodland star, I asked the CNPS folks 2 days later to confirm.  What I thought was an easy casual question ended up pulling out loupes and keys with a debate over whether it lacked hair.  Honestly, I couldn't follow the conversation, but I think they were trying to decide between tufted poppy and San Benito poppy (E. hypecoides), which is also on the latest Pinnacles plant list.  It's tufted.

Ed Ross advised me once that if given the choice between two flower photographs, always pick the one that has an insect on it.  He said it made it more interesting.  So, there's a bonus unidentified little beetle in the first photo above.  However, I'll admit I often pick pretty over practical.  I do like poppies of all sorts, including the fancy garden ones.  They're so cheery.  I forgive our natives for being yellow.

compare poppy hill with exactly 1 week later

CA poppy ~ 09/29/12 ~ Rocky Creek

California poppy

Eschscholzia californica

Papaveraceae

In all of my previous posts of CA poppies, I either talk about or show the characteristic red ring that distinguishes this poppy from other Eschscholzia spp. found in California.  The red ring is particularly noticeable once the flower has gone to seed.  I got the "red ring" terminology from Vern Yadon's collaborative Wildflowers of Monterey County.  Until researching for this post, I didn't know any other name for this distinctive flower structure.

 

 

As a backstory, I've been growing poppies at home this summer, along with baby blue eyes and a small lupine, from a wildflower seed packet handed to me by the Monterey City forestry folks at a local farmers' market. The packet mixture listed non-native wildflowers, like corn poppy (Papaver rhoeas), which did not come up.  The lupine went to seed over a month ago, which mirrors what I've seen out in the wild.  I suspected the poppies and baby blue eyes, two flowers I generally associate as spring bloomers, were only in bloom this late in the year because I was watering them.  So, I was chuffed to find these poppies blooming out in the wild down the coast.

What caught my attention about my garden "wildflower" poppies is that they have a small ring, but they're not red.  With this in mind, once I found the poppies shown here down at Rocky Creek, I proceeded to check for rings.  It was interesting because there were gradient areas where the red rings were prominent, then intergrade with partially red rings, then rings with no red.  I was actually hoping what I was growing at home and what I found with non-red rings were tufted poppy (Eschscholzia caespitosa).  Nope.

I did an internet search for Eschscholzia californica with "red ring" and only came up with my own blog posts.  Jepson eFlora mentions "receptacle rim" and "spreading rim".  The USDA Plant Guide PDF talks about "torus rim" and "collar-like pedestal".  Neither mentions the color of the rim.  After some more searching, including checking all of Jepson eFlora's 12 Eschscholzia spp. and ssp. descriptions and Calflora's 17 records with its linked CalPhotos, I've come to the conclusion that only CA poppies have rings, aka rims, regardless of the color.  If anyone knows differently, I'd love to hear from you.  I did find references to a non-Jepson recognized Eschscholzia mexicana (aka Eschscholzia californica ssp. mexicana) having small rims, but its natural wild areas are in southeast CA to other states (as a side note, it's funny that Lee Dittmann is the photographer in my small rims AZ link, because his name was brought up in e-mail conversation with a retired Coe Park ranger regarding 30 years of erroneously reported elegant piperia that I caught).  I'm left wondering if the promulgation of wildflower seed packets has introduced a genetic mix, such that native versus non-native can no longer be separated.

Genetics is fascinating.  Red rings, non-red rings, white petals, red petals, two-toned petals, etc.  How about three petals?

 

At the end of the day, I revert back to my ol' classic line, "Oooh, pretty flower!"

CA poppy ~ 05/14/11 ~ Marina City

California poppy
Eschscholzia californica ssp. californica
Papaveraceae

This is the first time I've ever seen creamy-white variants of the California poppy... and it was in a shopping center parking lot in only one spot out of numerous flower beds filled with solid orange poppies. Wikipedia and several Flickr photos call this an albino. Can plants be considered albino? I thought the term only applied to animals, but I could be wrong.

I like how these photos also feature the red ring that distinguishes this poppy from others. Usually I have to turn the flower over to look for the red ring at the base. And, yes, I do check, because there are around 6 species of Eschscholzia in the area. Shown above, the red rings are still attached to the developing seed pods.

fire poppy ~ 05/14/11 ~ Fort Ord

fire poppy / western poppy

Papaver californicum
Papaveraceae

I've wanted to see a fire poppy ever since I read about them in Wildflowers of Monterey County. They only bloom the year after a fire. This area was burned in the fall of 2010. Gail, one of our field guides, said she has never seen them bloom so profusely. You'll have to click on the photo to enlarge the image enough to even see the orange dots. I was surprised to see how tall the stalks were for such small poppies. Unfortunately, this is the closest I could get due to the reasons for the burning - unexploded ordinance location and removal. Erg.

bush poppy
Dendromecon rigida
Papaveraceae

Here's one shrub that if it weren't blooming, I'd have no idea what it is based on the leaves. I think I've mentioned before that I generally ignore bushes. Maybe I've gotten used to seeing shrubs pruned to an inch of their life and not looking very natural in gardens and public spaces. They generally don't excite me. However, it is fun to see the bright yellow of this bush poppy on hillsides.

ps - For those who follow my blog through readers, you may have noticed an odd testing post yesterday. I'm trying to figure out a better way to manage my numerous labels. It used to be fairly easy when I only had 4 label groups: flowers, insects, birds, and location labels. I want to easily find past posts of specific groups, like poppies, without having to scroll down from here to eternity in the widgets on the right side of this blog, or having to continually, manually maintain the lists. I've found google's search widget to not be very effective for my own blog or other blogs. Right now I have 4 groups of lists for plants: ferns, flowers (garden flowers, native wildflowers, and non-native wildflowers), plant families, and trees & shrubs. I don't particularly like the idea of adding additional pages to the top of my blog, because personally I rarely click on those unless it's an "about." Does anyone have any ideas?

pss 07/21/11 - I've changed labels around for plants. To see lists of all plant labels see plant families and plants.

Coulter's matilija poppy
Romneya coulteri
Papaveraceae

I'm adding the label of the fried egg poppy to garden plants, even though it is a native wildflower to some parts of California. This particular plant is easily 10 feet tall with 7 inch wide flowers and is going gangbusters right now.

CA poppy ~ 05/06/10 ~ Pinnacles

California poppy
Eschscholzia californica
Papaveraceae

California poppies were so prolific near the parking lot and picnic areas that I suspect they were planted there, versus naturally growing wild.

ps 05/10/11 - For more information about CA poppies than you can shake a stick at, check out Curtis Clark's CSU Pomona poppy website.

Coulter's matilija poppy
Romneya coulteri
Papaveraceae

I first heard this called the fried egg poppy, which is easy to remember for obvious reasons. It's HUGE! Apparently, it's the largest native CA flower and is extremely noticeable, even from a car going 45 mph.

It's interesting that Calflora (linked in the scientific name above) doesn't list a record of this species in Monterey or Santa Cruz Counties, nor does it show the smaller R. trichocalyx as existing locally. Plus, Coulter's is categorized as a List 4 - Watch List by the CNPS. I know both species are introduced in gardens (indeed, this pic was taken along the rec trail), but I swear I've seen it growing out in the wild along Carmel Valley Road and in Santa Cruz County along the rural end of Green Valley Road. Next time I drive out either road, I'll try to make to sure to document my sightings.

Another note of interest is my "local" Spring Wildflowers book states it blooms in May and June. Ha! Here's photographic evidence it blooms in early January!

about my photos

California poppy
Eschscholzia californica
Papaveraceae

The state flower. Most poppies I see are a solid orange. I loved the red coloration of this one found along the rec trail. I confirmed it was indeed a California poppy because it had the identifying red ring just below the petals. According to Vern Yadon's Wildflowers of Monterey County other color variations beyond yellow to orange are liberated horticultural hybrids. It sounds as if Vern knows the person who released the poppy hybrids. Hmm...

On a related note - I often get asked if I Photoshop my pics, particularly my sunrise pics. As if! These questions are even more perplexing considering most of my photos are very poor quality. I barely have the patience to turn on the camera and shoot from the generic setting, let alone mess with anything more than the occasional zoom or crop to emphasize the item of interest. We have an old Konica Minolta DiMAGE X50 and 98% of these blog pics came from this camera; sometimes I may borrow a friend's camera. I'm still running Windows ME (I know, gasp! - please don't remind me how outdated I am) and until I finally decide between Windows 7 or a lovely, spendy Mac, our new camera purchase will have to wait.

ps 05/06/10 - Thanks to a fancy new iMac and iPhoto, I am starting to "enhance" some photos. I just hope I don't get carried away. And, truth be told, some photos I post were taken by my husband Andy.

Coulter's matilija poppy
Romneya coulteri
Papaveraceae

California poppy
Eschscholzia californica
Papaveraceae

Much to my disappointment, this was one of the few flowers blooming at Garland Ranch on our wedding day. The heavy rain for weeks before delayed most blooms this year.