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California Poppy

Eschscholzia californica · Papaveraceae · all Eschscholzia records

Your local evidence lens

Separate evidence questions, never one approval badge

Set a ZIP to compare this record with state distribution, native range, USDA hardiness, and invasive records.

A genus split is not a placement verdict. Set a ZIP to read the local documented split.

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence: Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Fire-performance conditions: No test or rating condition is normalized.
Fire ecology context: No section-reviewed fire-ecology context is normalized.
Placement evidence: 2 source placement records; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions: California; Montana / Northern Rockies; southern Idaho / Intermountain
Maintenance: No sourced horticultural maintenance assertion is normalized; fire-test conditions do not supply maintenance advice.

Typed publication scope: 3 scopes across 3 cited fire sources

Fire Resistance of Plants Master Database · Official scoped edition
- Southern Idaho (ID footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2013-11-08
  The official database labels itself "For Southern Idaho" and describes Idaho residents at the urban-rangeland interface. FireApproved publishes 419 existing plant owners that cite its scored rows. This bounded Southern Idaho scope is regional context, not statewide coverage or a conclusion that the score transfers unchanged to every Idaho site.
Defensible Space Landscaping in the Urban/Wildland Interface: A Compilation of Fire Performance Ratings of Residential Landscape Plants · Official scoped edition
- CA; partial normalized coverage · 1997-07-01
  The UC Forest Products Laboratory says the guide covers properties of common California landscaping plants and was prepared for California fire agencies. FireApproved publishes 130 exact owners at historical California publication scope. The report is a 1997 compilation, not a current endorsement, site rating, or independent test of every row.
Fire-Resistant Plants for Montana Landscapes (MontGuide MT200101AG) · Official scoped edition
- MT; partial normalized coverage · 2022-04-01
  The April 2022 MontGuide explicitly presents fire-resistant species adapted to Montana. FireApproved publishes 92 exact plant records from the source while retaining excluded genus, family, and unresolved rows; the guide itself says not every listed species grows in every part of the state.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution: Documented in AK, AL, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, GA, HI, ID, IL, KY, LA, MA, MI, MO, NC, NE, NH, NM, NV, NY, OH, OR, PA, SC, TN, TX, UT, WA, WI, WY.
Native range: Current cited native range in AZ, CA, NM, NV, OR, TX, UT, WA.
Introduced / established: 6 sourced range or established records; set a location to match them. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness: Only uncertain or inapplicable hardiness rows are cited; no primary zone is projected.

3. Legal, ecological, and broader status

Legal-list status: Set a location for an exact legal-list result; source silence is not clearance.
Seed-list status: Set a location to compare the separate state noxious-weed seed layer.
Reported invasive here: 2 ecological invasive reports; set a location to distinguish exact from regional context.
Broader regional context: Aggregate AK, HI, and L48 evidence is shown only as regional context, never as an exact-state finding.
Federal context: Federal designations remain separate from state legal-list results.

How to read this page

The status above is computed from the cited rows below: independent recommendations can support a fire-resistant result, an avoid row can produce keep-away, and disagreement stays visible as conflict. Placement notes preserve each source’s own scheme rather than translating unlike rules into one scale. This is evidence about a plant, not permission to plant it in every part of the defensible space; Zone 0 remains noncombustible.

California Poppy (Eschscholzia californica) — Photo: (c) Annette Herz, some rights reserved (CC BY) (CC BY), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.

Form: perennial
USDA hardiness: Only uncertain or inapplicable source rows; no primary zone projected
Mature height: ~1.2 ft
Water need: low
Current cited native range: AZ, CA, NM, NV, OR, TX, UT, WA
Grows in: AK, AL, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, GA +24
Rated in: California; Montana / Northern Rockies; southern Idaho / Intermountain
Family: Papaveraceae
Evidence: 3 cited sources

Native and introduced range evidence

These are exact U.S. botanical-area records from the cited range source. Native and introduced describe biogeographic relationship, not fire performance or planting approval. Doubtful and extinct rows stay visible but do not count as current presence.

Current native

8

exact source areas

Current introduced

6

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

8 native source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04

Arizona (AZ)
California (CA)
New Mexico (NM)
Nevada (NV)
Oregon (OR)
Texas (TX)
Utah (UT)
Washington (WA)

6 introduced source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04

Alabama (AL)
Colorado (CO)
Hawaii (HI)
Illinois (IL)
Kentucky (KY)
New York (NY)

The lossless worldwide derivative is retained once in the research corpus; object pages repeat only exact U.S. areas needed by the local lens. The JSON twin carries the same page assertions.

Plant hardiness evidence

These values describe the plant source. Your ZIP zone comes from the separate 2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map. Whole-zone values stay whole-zone, and a single unresolved value is not treated as a tolerance range. Different source boundaries stay separate: overlapping statements are compared independently, while only ranges with no shared zone are called a conflict.

USDA PLANTS Database — Plant Characteristics · record ESCA2 · PLANTS Help Document 2022; characteristics cache retrieved 2026-08-23 · as of 2026-08-26

Minimum 7b · no upper limit documented · half zone precision · derived containing band

Exact source measurement: 7°F; mapped only to its containing half-zone.

Source taxon: Eschscholzia californica · source identifier match.

Source location: PlantCharacteristics record 71952, Temperature, Minimum (°F).

Not used for comparison: USDA PLANTS lists duration as Annual / Perennial; its minimum-temperature definition does not apply to summer annuals.

Where its sources say to plant it

Placement rules below use each source's own distances or named zones, tied to its rating. They are not interchangeable with the directory's current Zone 0 guidance.

Fire Resistance of Plants Master Database: plantable at 10' from home [Idaho minimum planting distance] (with its recommendation)
Defensible Space Landscaping in the Urban/Wildland Interf…: Chapter 4, Landscape Vegetation Database [ucfpl-1997] (with its recommendation)

The evidence

Grouped by what each source concluded. Primary evidence rated the plant itself (a lab, field program, or original curation); corroboration compiled or republished another source's rating and resolves to its root lineage.

Last verified 2026-08-23. JSON (CC BY 4.0)

Profiles: USDA PLANTS · GBIF · iNaturalist · Wikidata · ITIS

Eschscholzia californica (California Poppy). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/eschscholzia-californica/. Last verified 2026-08-23.