- Contributed By the Rose/Landscape Committee -
Living in California, the California poppy (
Eschscholzia californica), that little four petal golden yellow beauty, has to be one of your favorite flowers. With the help of some of our residents, these are starting to grow in several areas throughout the campus.
The flowers are solitary on long stems, silky textured in colors ranging from yellow to orange and flowering from February to September. They close at night opening again the following morning. The seeds are in slender ribbed seedpods. When
they dry out they split, shooting the black seeds all over.
The California poppy is the state flower, selected by the State Floral Society in December of 1890 and made official in 1903. Although the poppy had certainly been seen by Europeans, it was first described by Albert von Chamisso, the naturalist on the Russian ship
Rurik, when it dropped anchor in San Francisco in 1816, in a bay surrounded by hills covered with the golden flowers. The early Spanish settlers called it
copa del ora (cup of gold) after the legend that the orange petals, tuning to gold, filled the soil with the precious metal.
This species has been transported to many other parts of the world, both as a garden plant and inadvertently. Once the California gold rush ended, the miners set sail for new opportunities in Chile, New Zealand and Australia. Using sand from the bluffs of San Francisco as ballast for their ships, they transported poppy seeds to these other places, where they have become a widespread weed.
Californian Indians discovered that the poppy is a plant with sedative, analgesic and anti-spastic properties. They ate it, rubbed it in their hair to kill lice, used a poultice of fresh root for toothaches and applied an extract for headaches and sores. The Cahuilla women used the pollen as a cosmetic and the whole plant as a sedative for babies.
On your next walk keep an eye out for these cheerful, interesting beauties.