Eschscholzia

A favourite in our Gravel Garden, enjoying in the hot and dry summer conditions. Typically 4-petalled orange to yellow flowers, with other colours available in cultivated forms. Seeds contained in elongated pods, similar to Glaucium, both in the Papaveraceae family.

Increasingly found in Britain in the wild as a result of amenity plantings of so-called 'wild flower mixes' (ones that rarely point out the main components are not actually native wild flowers in this country), Californian poppy rarely persists in one spot. So too in gardens although it will happily self-seed where it wants to be. Despite the fact that its flowers produce little in the way of nectar, they do produce abundant pollen which is eaten for example by hoverflies and beetles, and supplied by honeybees to their larvae as a protein-rich food.