The Glory of California Poppies

When I first moved to Seattle, it wasn't the towering fir trees that won my heart. It wasn't the native rhododendrons, the rusty-barked madrones, or the noble cedars, either. It was the California poppies blazing in spring gardens and along the roads.

California poppies are native wildflowers that range from southwestern Washington to southern California. They thrive in dry, dusty, parched, neglected soil, but they're pleased as punch to find themselves in a well-watered garden and flourish there, too, so they've made themselves at home in the Puget Sound area.

Unlike many native Californians who've relocated to Pugetopolis, the poppies aren't at all daunted by gray skies, drizzle, rain, or July days that fail to rise above 65 degrees. Though they do fold up their petals if it's too dim and dank and wait patiently for some warming rays (unlike Californians I saw in the early 90s who folded their belongings into U-Hauls in late winter and pointed them south on the Pacific Coast highway).

California made the poppy its official state flower in 1903, but Native Americans were familiar with it long before California was California. They had many uses for it (and please note I am merely quoting authorities and am not advising that you do so yourself); apparently different parts were used either internally or externally to cure toothache, kill lice, heal sores, suppress headaches, and treat gastrointestinal ailments.

Today the plant is described by the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center as poisonous if ingested, particularly if the ingest-er is a child. So be forewarned.

Bees and other pollinators, however, imbibe happily in the poppies' nectar. It's fun to watch a big fat bumblebee rollicking in an open flower--the whole bee-and-blossom combo tips and twirls as if the bee is enjoying a spin in a teacup ride at a fair.

Judging by the vivid color of this insect's pollen-packing abdomen, bees must also collect the flowers' golden dust. Some Native Americans were known to use the poppy's pollen for cosmetic purposes.

I'm not surprised that even the pollen of this poppy is lovely. I'm sweet on every part of this flower's growth. Each stem, for example, first wears a little green conical hat that protects the orange petals before they unfold. It slowly splits and falls off as the blossom opens.

When pollination is complete, the flower petals drift off and dapple the ground to form a tissue-thin film of sunshine. Then the plant grows another slim green party hat, this one packed with seeds. It even retains a frilly little pink ruffle at the base of the hat.

The flowers keep blooming from "midsummer to Michaelmas [Sept. 29]," according to an old field guide, The Observer's Book of Garden Flowers, published by Beatrix Potter's friends Frederick Warne & Co., Ltd., in 1957. Actually, they're in bloom here long before midsummer, thankfully, providing a hit of virtual sunlight when actual rays are often in short supply in Seattle. (In California, April 6 is officially California Poppy Day, and the little "flame flowers" are already ablaze in some of its valleys.)

New blossoms open even as these stems put all their energy into the growth of those skinny hats, which eventually stretch the length of an adult's pointer finger before turning brown and drying out.

At that point, the sides split along seams, and the cargo of seeds spills out.

California poppies today have no particular "use" to humans other than beautification of landscapes; they're widely sold as ornamentals, and are inclined to be invasive in some places.

Range maps show that many southeastern and eastern states are now home to the plants, which perhaps will bring ease to the departed soul of author Neltje Blanchan, who laments in her 1900 work Nature's Garden, "Alas! that the glorious California Poppy, so commonly grown in Eastern gardens...should confine itself to a limited range on the Pacific Coast."

*Yawn* Feeling sleepy after all this poppycock? You might well be ready for a nap. Poppies, as anyone who's seen The Wizard of Oz knows, are known for having a soporific effect. Ethnologists who interviewed California's Native Americans in years past about their uses for plants were told that the flowers of this poppy were laid beneath the beds of children to help them drift off to sleep.

Pollination Celebration

Critters are pollinating the heck out of the garden. Every flower seems to harbor a bee, beetle, or fly, and every time Luna sticks her nose into a plant, something flies out in a panic and she jumps back in surprise.

I'm not a pollinator, of course, but pollination has been much on my mind of late because I've been working simultaneously on two writing projects involving insects. So I am primed to spout statistics such as "about 75 percent of flowering plants rely on animal pollinators in order to set seed."  (I am also popping Benadryl tablets with frequency as pollen from wind-pollinated grasses ends up in my nasal passages instead of on grass flowers, much to my and the flowers' dismay.)

Here is a concatenation of snaps of pollination on our plantation being done with determination by a conglomeration of invertebration:

African daisy, with pollen splatter after rainfall

 

A species of bumble bee lolling around drunkenly inside a rhododendron blossom.



This beetle is, I think, a 20-spotted Lady Beetle, Psyllobora vigintimaculata. I haven't had any luck
deciphering the first part of this scientific name, but the latter translates, somewhat disappointingly, to merely "twenty spotted." Beetles are not as efficient as bees at pollinating but some flowers lure them specifically. This one is on a sedum flower and is well camouflaged incidentally by all those anthers. These lady beetles feed on fungi, not aphids. Its mandibles are lined with comblike small "teeth" for raking fungus and fungal spores from plant surfaces. This species is found throughout the United States and into Canada and Mexico.

The all-time pollination champion, the honey bee.
(At least I'm pretty sure it's a honey bee.)

Nectar guides, lines that point the way to where
nectar is stored in flowers such as the pansy

Hanging On to Summer, but Autumn's Making Inroads

People get confused enough in fall, what with all that setting back clocks by one hour in November and ultimately arising in the dark and returning home from work in the dark. But right now it's the plants that seem muddled in my area.

Just as the vine maple and the birch in the garden are turning orange, yellow, and red, some of the plants are merrily bursting into bloom as if spring were right around the corner. I can't say I blame them--the weather last week was stunning, with blue skies and temperatures above 70F. But it's as if the trees are serious sages who are tapped into the wisdom of the ages, while the shrubs and perennials are ridiculous grasshoppers from a fable who won't stockpile food and insist on playing the fiddle instead.

The spiders and insects, however, appear to know the jig is up. Some of the garden spiders seem to be nearly the size of salad plates and their webs as big as wagon wheels, and many of them have caught so many insects that they've stockpiled future meals on the spokes. Meanwhile, the honeybees are in an absolute frenzy of nectar gathering. I've noticed quite a few mummified bees in the spiders' larders.




Mexican orange blossoms.

 




Rose--I've lost the tag, but it's some sturdy wild
shrub-rose variety, with lovely salmon and yellow tones.

 


Busy bee on goldenrod, a flower that IS supposed to
bloom in late summer/early fall. Poor goldenrod, always blamed
for hay fever, but not responsible for it at all; the bee
pollinating it is proof positive of its innocence.

 




Spirea blossoms.

 


Fly on fall-blooming aster. It isn't actually supposed
to be sideways, but Blogger can't seem to handle
vertical pictures, even when you crop them to be
horizontal. So just lie down to view your screen.