Common Name: Californian Tree Poppy, Matilija Poppy
Description: Large, rather woody glaucous perennials, often glabrous, latex colourless, with creeping underground rootstocks.
Leaves alternate, pinnatifid to pinnatisect.
Flowers solitary, terminal, large and showy; sepals 3, ovate, olblique, gibbous, apiculate at apex, short lived; petals 6 in 2 whorls of 3, obovate, silky, crumpled at first, white, fragrant. Stamens numerous, filaments threadlike, yellow. Stigmas stalkless on top of the ovary. Ovary of 7–12 united carpels, placentation parietal, ovules born on inwardly firected plates which almost meet at the centre.
Fruit a capsule opening at the top.
Distribution and occurrence: a genus of 2 species native to California and Mexico. In New South Wales one species naturalised. Weed of roadsides and railways.
Text by B.M. Wiecek, based on The European Garden Flora Vol 4: 105 (1995) and The New RHS Dictionary of Gardening Vol 4: 100 (1992); last revised April 2017
Taxon concept: Australian Plant Census (accessed April 2017)
| One species in NSW: Romneya trichocalyx |
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