Saturday, May 14, 2011

CA poppy ~ 05/14/11 ~ Marina City



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.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

One of my botanical pet peeves is the various hybrids/cultivars in plant catalogues for yellow or red Calif poppies. They are supposed to be orange, the color of the sun, the color of the pure cadmium orange pigment in my paints....or else they fail to stir the soul.

Katie (Nature ID) said...

This was the first time I ever made a mental note that CA poppies fluoresce (see second picture above and the 2 flowers bottom center). Maybe that's why we're so drawn to a pure cadmium orange-colored poppy and why you compare it to the color of the sun - the petals give off light at the same frequency as sunlight.

Sue Langley said...

Hi katie, recently I found a pure white poppy in among the wildflower meadow planted last fall from CA native seeds from S&SSeeds in Carpenteria. http://bit.ly/l98lHo

Another ususual finding is this white Brodiaea elgans, at least that is what is surrounding it. I've never in ten years seen a white one and the blue ones grow in large numbers here. Strange and delightful! I'd like to know why this happens.

http://bit.ly/iFEYhc

Katie (Nature ID) said...

Hi, again, Sue. I know the white form is one of several natural mutations that "seed" the basis of catalog company offerings. I've found a couple other white versions of native plants, such as shooting stars and sky lupine. I'm guessing petal color is due to a gene that can readily switch. I like your white B. elegans pic.