During the summer the valleys of California are a desolate place. We get rain maybe ten days a year here; by October there's no greenery in sight. Everything is rocks and tumbleweed. The vegetation feels like paper. Clay earth bakes under the endless expanse of blue sky: This is the desert.
Even in this landscape, though, there's life. You see rabbits and quail and tiny long-legged mice — all grey, of course. But there's much more you don't see. Put out a bird feeder. Now you have pheasants, cardinals, blue jays. Grow a garden: you have honeybees and swarms of gossamer-winged white butterflies. Put out a water bowl: coyotes and bobcats. If you were a real fool you could attract mountain lions with meat scraps. But you get the idea. I could spend my whole life writing about the creatures you can attract here with a bit of care. This is the best kind of beauty — that which has to be drawn out.
You can tell immediately when someone has never driven on a dirt road before.
Last Spring a Ford Excursion rocked its way up the dirt trail that runs alongside my house, going about five miles per hour. It labored over every dip in the road and nearly stopped when it encountered washboard. The biggest, most obscene SUV there is. Couldn't risk fucking up the shocks, I guess. I do about thirty-five up here in my Civic.
Anyway, I was out front watering our cacti when the Ford stopped and its window rolled down. Older lady inside. Are there California Poppies here? I'm a flower collector. From Ohio. I've never seen California Poppies and I was camping in the area and heard that poppies grew here.
Tourist in Aguanga. I was reeling but I didn't show it. Instead I walked alongside her Excursion and led her to the hillside behind my house that had turned orange with the last rains. The tourist couldn't speak for several seconds.
The Poppies had been drawn out by the water. Countless seeds buried in the bone-dry earth had erupted like fireworks at the first sip of moisture. A field of flowers had appeared in my backyard.
California Poppy — California State Blossom
Vast fields of Golden Poppies have ever been one of the strong and peculiar features of California scenery. The gladsome beauty of this peerless flower has brought renown to the land of its birth. Present everywhere, at all times in some form, it is not surprising that it has taken firm hold of the affections of the people, and that the homage of the nature-loving world is so freely offered it.
—Emory E. Smith, The Golden Poppy, 1902
Kingdom Plantae
Division Magnoliophyta
Class Magnoliopsida
Order Ranunculales
Family Papaveraceae
Genus Eschscholzia
Species E. californica
There's a reason this poppy is the state flower of California. Have a look at this hillside. It's not mine — my flower field turned to dust long ago. But it once looked like that. In 1890 E. californica beat the Mariposa Lily for state flower by a landslide. Of course it did. The poppy's gold; California's the golden state. Sorry, lily.
The over-consanantized genus Eschscholzia owes its name to German botanist Adelbert von Chamisso, who derived the name from colleague Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz on an expedition to the American Southwest in the early nineteenth century. When they landed in San Francisco, California, the poppies were the only thing in bloom.
The California Poppy is a tall and solitary flower, attaining heights of 60cm. Petals are silky. Foliage is blue-green and fruits are slender capsules, three to nine cm long. It's a hearty flower — self-seeding, drought-resistant. It regenerates after fires. Its solitary blossoms create a good splash effect for the cosmetic gardener's border. It fringes the highways in the Spring.
Flowering season for this one is unusually long: they can last until late October. Tough flowers.
A misconception about California Poppies is that harming them is illegal because they're the state flower. This was on one or two of the gardening sites I researched. It's only illegal if they're government poppies planted for beautification along the road or somewhere. So slash away.
All parts of the flower are toxic, so don't go eating them. Native Americans took advantage of the flower's opiatic properties and pressed its leaves agains their cheeks and gums to relieve toothache. But they knew what they were doing.
Poppies have been exported to several parts of the world with climates similar to that of the southwestern US — some Mediterranean areas, Chile, Australia.
Sources
Garden Guides
www.gardenguides.com/articles/californiapoppy.htm
Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Poppy
CSU Pomona
www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/poppy/