FRIENDS OF EDGEWOOD NATURAL PRESERVE
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FRIENDS OF EDGEWOOD NATURAL PRESERVE
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A CLOSER LOOK AT YELLOW MARIPOSA LILY By Bob Young This is the fourteenth of a series of articles describing the flowers pictured in our wildflower brochure. —ed.
Yellow Mariposa Lily (scientific name Calochortus luteus), is shown in the brochure “Common Native Wildflowers of Edgewood” published jointly by the Santa Clara Valley Chapter of the California Native Plant Society and Friends of Edgewood Natural Preserve. The scientific name was given in 1833. The word Calochortus comes from the Greek meaning beautiful grass and the word luteus comes from the Latin for yellowish or mud-colored. The genus Calochortus is in the Lily family. In the September 1999 Edgewood Explorer newsletter, an article described another Calochortus species, Calochortus albus, the Globe Lily or Fairy Lantern. While the Globe Lily has a nodding flower and is on shady banks, the Yellow Mariposa Lily petals are erectly pointing upward, and it grows in sunny grasslands. Another Mariposa Lily, the White Mariposa Lily, also grows in the grasslands on Edgewood. The Spanish name Mariposa, meaning butterfly, aptly describes the presence of the flower in grassy fields. In Margaret Armstrong’s book Western Wild Flowers, she writes that the “brilliant hairy spots on the petals are wonderfully like the markings of a butterfly’s wing and the airy blossoms seem to have but just alighted on the tips of their slender stalks.” If you look closely into the flower, you will usually see a maroon spot near the center of each of the three wedge-shaped petals. Below the spot, a hairy, brownish, crescent-shaped gland can be found. The Yellow Mariposa Lily grows from 8 to 20 inches (20 to 50 cm) tall in adobe, clay, or rocky soils. It blooms in late spring and goes dormant in the summer. It is found under 2100 feet elevation in the California Coast Range, the Sierra Nevada foothills, and down as far as the northern Channel Islands. Other names for the plant are Yellow Mariposa, Gold Nuggets, Butterfly Tulip, and Mariposa Tulip. |
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