By: Mary Simun

A new neighbor (recently arrived from China with limited English) walking by my front yard in Torrance (which is a SBPC certified native habitat), pointed to the blooming poppies and said she loved those flowers. I informed her that they were the California State wildflower and she said she wanted to grow them, so I opened my seed library (under my little book library) and gave her a seed packet. Her face lit up, so I gave her a second one. She was overjoyed.

It never ceases to amaze me just how much joy a few flower seeds can sow…

The California Poppy (Eschscholzia californica) is native to California. Growing wild through the state, this vibrant poppy thrives in sandy soil with no tending. It likes grassy and open areas from sea level to 6500 feet altitude in the western United States throughout California, extending to Oregon, southern Washington, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and the Sonoran and northwest Baja areas of Mexico. The coastal subspecies is orange and yellow, while the inland variety is orange.

The CA poppy can grow 2 to 24 inches tall, with alternately branching waxy pale blue-green foliage. The leaves are divided into round, lobed segments. The flowers are solitary on long stems, silky-textured, with four petals, each petal 3/4 to 2 1/2 inches long and broad; their color ranges from yellow (particularly in southern California) to orange, and flowering is from February to September. The petals close at night or in cold, windy weather; they open again the following morning, although they may remain closed in cloudy weather.

The fruit is a slender capsule 1 to 3 1/2 inches long, which splits in two to release its numerous small black or dark brown seeds. It is perennial in mild parts of its native range, annual in harsher colder and hotter climates.

After flowering in the summer, its seed pods burst open, revealing dozens of black seeds that can be saved or left in the soil surface to grow again the next year. The indigenous people of California have traditionally used all parts of the poppy for food and medicine including the leaves, roots, flowers, pollen and seeds. This plant is tough, fast-growing, drought-adapted, self-seeding, and easy to grow in gardens. It is best grown as an annual, in full sun, but it will tolerate partial shade. It prefers well-draining, sandy, often poor soils.

It was selected as the state flower by the California State Floral Society in December 1890, winning out over the Mariposa Lily (genus Calochortus) and the Matilija Poppy (Romneya coulteri) by a landslide, but the state legislature did not make the selection official until 1903. Its golden blooms were deemed a fitting symbol for the Golden State.

Sources - CALSCAPE - https://calscape.org/Eschscholzia-californica-(California-Poppy)]