Top 10 Oregon Native Plants for Pollinators: Week 9

The Garden Ecology Lab’s Pollinator Plant PR Campaign Presents….. California Poppy!

The Garden Ecology Lab is releasing a series of plant profiles of the top 10 Oregon native plants for pollinators, based on Aaron Anderson’s 2017-2019 field trials of 23 Oregon native plants. We will feature one plant per week for 10 weeks, this is week 9! Profiles will include photos, planting information, and will highlight common pollinators of each plant.

Photo by Jen Hayes

Plant Facts

  • Scientific Name: Eschscholzia californica
  • Life Cycle: Annual/Perennial
  • Growth Habit: Clumping, sprawling
  • Bloom Duration: Early Spring to Late Summer depending on seeding date.
  • Hardiness Zone: 7-10
  • Special Traits: Drought-tolerant, deer and rabbit resistant.
  • When to plant: Seed in Fall for a Spring bloom, or seed in Spring for a mid-summer bloom.

Pollinator Facts

  • California poppy only provides pollen to its insect visitors, but provides it in an abundance!
  • Aaron’s study found California poppy to be associated with 4 species of sweat bees: Halictus farinosus, H. tripartitus, Lasioglossum dialictus sp. 5, L. olympiae, and a bumblebee: Bombus vosnesenskii.
  • Other common visitors to California poppy include butterflies, specifically, acmon blue and mormon metalmark.

Sweat bee leaving a California poppy. Photo by Jen Hayes

California Poppy’s Native Range in Oregon

Oregon's populations of California poppy are primarily found in the Willamette Valley and the Klamath Mountains as well as some parts of the Columbia River Gorge and the Coast Range.

Maps and legend acquired from the Oregon Flora Project, with Imagery Sourced from Google. Copyright 2021© TerraMetrics

California poppy as a pollinator plant

California poppy’s range extends from Washington to northwest Baja California and east towards Arizona and southwest New Mexico. A popular flower for roadside plantings, California poppy survives well in average to poor soil that is well-draining. It survives mild-winters as an herbaceous perennial and reseeds itself readily. California poppy is an all-around easy pollinator plant to grow, and growing it pays off, as it attracts an incredible diversity and abundance of bees with its remarkable volumes of pollen.

Infographics developed by LeAnn Locher, Aaron Anderson, and Gail Langellotto.

Did you know?

California poppy’s petals are responsive to light! In the absence of light (at night and on cloudy days) petals spiral around each other and tighten to a close. In the presence of light, cells in the petals expand in response to the plant growth hormone auxin. This mechanism opens the petals allowing pollinators to access the flower’s pollen — although in the field we watch impatient bumblebees force their way into closed California poppy flowers to get to the pollen anyways.

Petals close tight during the night and remain so on overcast days. Photo by iNaturalist user metacom CC some rights reserved
Poppies in various stages of opening and poppy buds enclosed in pinkish-green calyxes. Photo by iNaturalist user Daniel Das CC some rights reserved

Photos from the field

Tune in next week for the next edition of our Pollinator Plant PR Campaign.

3 thoughts on “Top 10 Oregon Native Plants for Pollinators: Week 9

  1. Thank you for the excellent work on the Top 10. I have been enjoying the weekly posts that provide a “one stop shopping” experience for the research that has been done on Oregon Native pollinator plants by the Garden Ecology Lab team. What a terrific resource!!

    • Thank you for taking the time to share such a nice comment.

      This series has been conceived, planned, researched, written, and formatted almost entirely by the students in the lab. They are such forces of goodness, and they continually amaze me. Bravo to Jen & Mallory (for putting the blog posts together), Nicole (for social media outreach), and Aaron & Lucas (for three years’ worth of field research) . . . For bringing this information to Oregon gardeners.

  2. Hi Jen and others doing this research. I have been following your posts knowing that one day I would be able to use the information, along with what I am learning through the Oregon Bee Atlas, to create a talk on native bees and plants they use. Your research is solidifying my observations and now I have good science to back up what I am seeing.
    I love California poppy as a pollinator plant. The Calliopsis females at my place just wallow among the stamens collecting pollen all over their bodies. A fun sight to watch.
    Thank you for sharing your work.

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