© Chris Shuck · CC BY-NC
iNaturalist — CC, credited & licensed per image
Asteraceae family
Baker's Stickyseed Blennosperma bakeri
Native Specialist-bee host
Early-season nectar — Flowers in a late-winter / early-spring window when few other plants in our catalog bloom — valuable early forage for pollinators (relative to our catalog's bloom coverage).
Baker's Stickyseed is an annual wildflower native to the lower 48 states. It blooms Mar – Apr. A host for pollen-specialist native bees.
More about this plant
Blennosperma bakeri is a rare species of flowering plant in the daisy family known by the common names Baker's stickyseed and Sonoma sunshine. Wikipedia →
Growing & care
USDA PLANTS · TRY Conditions
Sources · Conditions
Cold hardiness (derived) — Hardiness
- Hardiness
- ≥ zone 11 derived from its U.S. range
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Foliage
- Lifespan
- Annual
- Foliage
- Broadleaf
In the garden
Herb layer — Sits in the herb of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
Rain garden / bioswale — Rated OBL on the wetland list — tolerates wet feet, so it suits the soggy zone of a rain garden or bioswale that catches and filters runoff.Open guide →
derived roles The garden year bloom → fruit → fall colour
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Bloom
Bloom (the flower's colour)
Bloom · Mar – Apr — 27 obs · Herbarium specimens — Park et al. 2023 (CC BY 4.0)
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 →✦ Bees specialist-bee host · 5 bee visitors
Specialist native bees depend on it.
Some native bees are pollen specialists (oligolectic) — they raise young only on pollen from particular plant genera. Blennosperma is a recorded specialist-bee host, so losing it can mean losing the bee that relies on it.
5 native & managed bee species are documented visiting Baker's Stickyseed :
Specialist hosts from Smith et al. 2024. Visitor records (observations, not exhaustive) from Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) ·
GloBI → · ✦ = pollen-specialist bee (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.
Related plants
More Blennosperma →
Native
Common Stickyseed
Blennosperma nanum
●○○○○ 
Native
Alkali Sunflower
Helianthus laciniatus
●●●●● 
Native
Alpine False Goldenaster
Heterotheca pumila
●●●●● 
Native
Alpine Leafybract Aster
Symphyotrichum foliaceum
●●●●● 
Native
Anisescented Goldenrod
Solidago odora
●●●●● 
Native
Anticosti Island Aster
Symphyotrichum anticostense
●●●●● Same genus / family, ranked by ecological value — from the PlantKey catalog
Sources for this entry (19) 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)
[05] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status
[06] Wetland indicator — USACE National Wetland Plant List (2022)
[07] Photos — iNaturalist — CC, credited per image
[08] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
[09] Ecological value — Smith et al. 2024 (CC BY)
[10] Bloom period — Herbarium specimens — Park et al. 2023 (CC BY 4.0)
[11] Conservation rank — NatureServe Explorer (CC BY)
[12] Federal ESA status — USFWS ECOS (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service)
[13] Foliage — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[14] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[15] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[17] Bee specialists — Smith et al. 2024 (Zenodo, CC BY 4.0)
[19] County range — GBIF Open Data — open-licensed occurrences (CC0/CC-BY) → county
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open data, please attribute
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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