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Downingia ornatissima
Folded calicoflower is a small annual wildflower from California's Central Valley, grown mainly in wet vernal pools and similar seasonally flooded ground. It needs moist soil in the cool growing season, and it is rarely grown in gardens outside its native habitat.
Downingia ornatissima is a species of flowering plant in the bellflower family known by the common name folded calicoflower. This showy wildflower is endemic to California, where it is a resident of vernal pools and other wet places in the Central Valley. This annual grows an erect, branching stem with usually one tubular flower at the top of each branch. The flower has an upper lip made up of two narrow, pointed lobes in shades of light purple, and a lower lip made up of three lobes fused into one surface, which is the same color as the upper lip and has a central field of white with two prominent yellow projections. The flower is similar to those of other downingias, except it is lightly crinkled, with the upper lobes often curled back and the edges of the lower lobes uneven. The dark blue anther just emerges from where it is tucked between the upper lobes.
Bach's calicoflower · Hoover's calicoflower · Doublehorn calicoflower · Maroonspot calicoflower · Toothed calicoflower · Elegant calicoflower · Harlequin calicoflower · Great Basin calicoflower · Sierra calicoflower · Flatface calicoflower · Dwarf calicoflower · Cascade calicoflower
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Downingia ornatissima by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
