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Home / Browse / Argemone / Southwestern Pricklypoppy (subsp. pinnatisecta)
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Pictured: Argemone pleiacantha — the species. This subspecies isn’t separately illustrated.
Papaveraceae family

Southwestern Pricklypoppy (subsp. pinnatisecta) Argemone pleiacantha subsp. pinnatisecta subspecies

Native Specialist-bee host

Southwestern Pricklypoppy (subsp. pinnatisecta) is a perennial wildflower native to the lower 48 states. It grows to 0.6 ft in part shade – shade, with brown fruit. A host for pollen-specialist native bees.

More about this plant

Argemone pinnatisecta, known as the Sacramento prickly poppy, is an angiosperm and part of the poppy family. A very thorny looking perennial that grows up to a meter and a half in height. The thorny stems are covered in bluish green serrated leaves with spiky tips. The flower buds are also covered in these sharp thin thorns until they open, between May and August, revealing six white petals up to four centimeters long and nine centimeters wide, and a bright yellow anther with various stamens jetting out. The fruits of plant contain black seeds about two millimeters in diameter. Wikipedia →

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
USDA PLANTS — Sun · Soil & moisture
USDA — SoilPH — Soil pH
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Fertility Requirement / Soil Adaptation — Fertility need · Adapts to
USDA — Temp-Min °F — Hardiness
Sun
Part shade – shade
Soil & moisture
Low moisture
Soil pH
7–9
Fertility need
Low
Adapts to
Coarse (sandy), Medium (loam)
Hardiness
USDA zone 8+
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Height, Mature — Height
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Growth Rate / Spread / Growth Form / Lifespan / Active Growth Period / Seed Period — Spread · Growth rate · Growth form · Active growth
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
USDA PLANTS — FoliageTexture — Foliage
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Fruit/Seed Color / Fruit Persistence — Fruit
Height
0.6 ft
Spread
None — clumping
Growth rate
Moderate
Growth form
Single crown
Lifespan
Perennial · short-lived
Foliage
coarse texture
Active growth
Spring through autumn
Fruit
Brown
In the garden
Sources · In the garden
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Propagation Method / Commercial Availability — Propagate by · In the trade
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Germination (cold stratification) — Seed starting
USDA PLANTS — Seed Period — Seeds ripen
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Foliage Texture / Browse Palatability / Resprout — Resprouts if cut
Propagate by
Seed
Seed starting
No stratification needed
Seeds ripen
Year-round seed-collection / harvest window
In the trade
Routinely available
Resprouts if cut
No
Ground-cover layer — Sits in the ground-cover of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
Living mulch / groundcover — Low, ground-hugging grower — can carpet bare soil as a living mulch, shading out weeds and holding moisture.Open guide →
derived roles
When to sow · for your area

Sow timing keys off your local last- and first-frost dates.

Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
❧ Caterpillar hosts ~1 caterpillar species

Argemone supports ~1 caterpillar species.

Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is a modest genus.

Recorded feeding on Argemone in North America, including:

Neoterpes ephelidaria · geometer (inchworm) moth Platynota labiosana · leafroller moth Platynota nigrocervina · leafroller moth Sicya pergilvaria · geometer (inchworm) moth Trichoplusia ni · owlet moth
Keystone count (genus-level) from Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use records. Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).
✦ Bees specialist-bee host

Specialist native bees depend on it.

Some native bees are pollen specialists (oligolectic) — they raise young only on pollen from particular plant genera. Argemone is a recorded specialist-bee host, so losing it can mean losing the bee that relies on it.

Xerces pollinator conservation →
Specialist hosts from Smith et al. 2024.
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
Sources for this entry (23) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[16] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status
[17] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
[18] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts · Smith et al. 2024 (CC BY)
[19] Conservation rank — NatureServe Explorer (CC BY)
[20] Federal ESA status — USFWS ECOS (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service)
[21] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[22] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
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PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

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