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Onagraceae family

Intermediate Suncup Camissonia intermedia

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).

Intermediate Suncup is an annual wildflower native to the lower 48 states. It blooms Mar – Jun. A host for pollen-specialist native bees.

More about this plant

Camissoniopsis intermedia is a species of evening primrose known by the common name intermediate suncup. It is native to California and Baja California, where it grows on the slopes of coastal and inland hills and mountains, especially in areas that have recently burned. It is an annual herb producing an erect, hairy stem up to about half a meter in height. Most of the leaves are located in a basal rosette at ground level and are oval to lance-shaped and up to 12 centimeters in length. The hairy, nodding inflorescence produces flowers with yellow petals just a few millimeters in length. The petals have one or two red dots at their bases. The fruit is a straight or coiling, wormlike capsule up to 2.5 centimeters long. 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
Lifespan
Annual
In the garden
Herb layer — Sits in the herb of a layered food forest or polyculture.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 – Jun — 67 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 →
❧ Caterpillar hosts Documented caterpillar host
✦ 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. Camissonia is a recorded specialist-bee host, so losing it can mean losing the bee that relies on it.

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.
How we know this (1) Methods & honest limits
Photosynthesis Direct fact

A recorded categorical fact: each species is tagged C3 (standard), C4 (heat/water-efficient) or CAM (succulent, night-time CO₂ uptake) — or a facultative combination. We only show a trait card for the noteworthy C4/CAM cases; C3 is the unremarkable majority, kept in the data but not surfaced as a card.

Kattge, J. et al. TRY plant trait database — Categorical Traits Dataset (2012).
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →
Sources for this entry (11) 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] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
[07] Ecological value — GloBI · Smith et al. 2024 (CC BY)
[09] Photosynthetic pathway — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[10] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[11] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
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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