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Asteraceae family

Douglas' Tickseed Coreopsis douglasii

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).

Douglas' Tickseed 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

Leptosyne douglasii is a species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae known by the common name Douglas' tickseed. It is native to California from Santa Clara County to San Diego County, as well as from Mohave County in Arizona. 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 →
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 — 54 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 ~6 caterpillar species

Coreopsis supports ~6 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 Coreopsis in North America, including:

Xanthothrix ranunculi · owlet moth ✦ Agonopterix atrodorsella · concealer moth Argyrotaenia franciscana · Orange Tortrix Argyrotaenia isolatissima · leafroller moth Coleophora acamtopappi · casebearer moth Euproserpinus phaeton · Phaeton Primrose Sphinx
+ 5 more species →
Homoeosoma electella · Sunflower Moth Suleima helianthana · Sunflower Bud Moth Synchlora aerata · Wavy-Lined Emerald Tornos scolopacinarius · geometer (inchworm) moth Xanthothrix neumoegeni · 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). ✦ = recorded on this exact species.
✦ Bees specialist-bee host · 9 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. Coreopsis is a recorded specialist-bee host, so losing it can mean losing the bee that relies on it.

Xerces pollinator conservation →

9 native & managed bee species are documented visiting Douglas' Tickseed :

Augochlorella bracteata · sweat bee Colletes mandibularis · cellophane bee Halictus ligatus · sweat bee Perdita sternalis · mining bee Augochlora aurifera · sweat bee Colletes birkmanni · cellophane bee
+ 3 more bees →
Ceratina cockerelli · Cockerell's Ceratina Hylaeus modestus · Modest Masked Bee Perdita macswaini · mining bee
Specialist hosts from Smith et al. 2024. Visitor records (observations, not exhaustive) from Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI →
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
Climate niche (heat tolerance & native rainfall) Derived

We take the plant’s U.S. county range and look up each county’s long-term climate, then summarise: native rainfall = the median annual rainfall across its counties; heat tolerance = the warm end (90th percentile) of average temperature across its range (mirroring how our cold-hardiness floor uses an extreme). Counties + medians blunt the roadside/observer bias that makes point-level climate unreliable. Needs at least five placeable counties.

Honest limits: A realized, sampling-biased niche (where it has been recorded, not its physiological optimum), and county climate is coarse — large Western counties span deserts and mountains. Derived guide, never a measured fact.

Realized-niche / climate-envelope approach (Pearson & Dawson 2003; Soberón 2007). Climate: NOAA NCEI nClimDiv county normals (1991–2020).
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 (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
[07] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
[08] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts · Smith et al. 2024 (CC BY)
[10] Conservation rank — NatureServe Explorer (CC BY)
[12] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[13] Climate niche — Derived — realized climate niche from U.S. county occurrences (GBIF) × NOAA NCEI county climate normals 1991–2020 (public domain)
[14] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[16] Flower-visitor value (derived) — Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI
[17] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[18] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
[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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