Golden Spiderflower Cleome platycarpa
Golden Spiderflower is an annual wildflower native to the lower 48 states. It grows to 2 ft and blooms May in part shade – shade, with yellow fruit. A host for pollen-specialist native bees.
More about this plant
Cleomella platycarpa is a species of flowering plant in the cleome family known by the common names golden bee plant and golden spiderflower. It is native to the western United States from northeastern California to Idaho, including the Modoc Plateau, where it grows on clay and volcanic soils in the sagebrush. It is an annual herb branching at the base into several erect stems up to about 60 centimetres (24 in) tall. The stems are green tinted with purple, coated densely in glandular hairs, and lined with many leaves. Each leaf is divided into three small leaflets. The top of each stem is occupied by a raceme of many flowers. Each flower has generally four yellow sepals and four yellow petals around a center of many yellow stamens. The fruit is a flat, hairy capsule up to 2.5 centimeters long which hangs on the long, remaining flower receptacle. Found between 800–1200m. Wikipedia →
Growing & care
USDA PLANTS · TRY- Sun
- Part shade – shade
- Soil & moisture
- Medium moisture
- Soil pH
- 6.5–8.9
- Fertility need
- Low
- Adapts to
- Medium (loam), Fine (clay)
- Hardiness
- USDA zone 13+
- Height
- 2 ft
- Spread
- None — clumping
- Growth rate
- Rapid
- Growth form
- Single crown
- Lifespan
- Annual
- Foliage
- Broadleaf · medium texture
- Active growth
- Summer
- Fruit
- Yellow
- Propagate by
- Seed
- Seed starting
- No stratification needed
- Seeds ripen
- Summer seed-collection / harvest window
- In the trade
- No known commercial source
- Resprouts if cut
- No
Sow timing keys off your local last- and first-frost dates.
Wildlife & pollinators
How pollinator value is scored →❧ Caterpillar hosts ~5 caterpillar species
Cleome supports ~5 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 Cleome in North America, including:
+ 2 more species → ↑ show fewer
✦ 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. Cleome is a recorded specialist-bee host, so losing it can mean losing the bee that relies on it.
Related plants
More Cleome →
How we know this (1) Methods & honest limits
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.
Sources for this entry (25) Open & cited
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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