Beach suncup

Beach suncup

Beach suncup is a very attractive plant with bright yellow flowers, rather small but not too small. Well, I like suncups. It looks very close to Sierra suncup, a desert plant. Suncups' Latin name is... well, in a minute. First, note that suncup is another name for evening primrose, so it follows that suncups belong to Evening primrose family (Onagraceae). Like other plants of this family it had 4 petal and cross-like shape of the stigma.

So about this Latin name. Well, the whole idea of the Latin name is to have a unique scientific name that is peculiar to one particular species. It is done for ease of identification because common names are a mess. There can be ten or more genera sharing the same common name. So botanists came out with scientific name for every plant discovered on the planet. However, I found that some plants have two or even more Latin names. This genus suncup and this beach suncup species in particular seems to have six (sic!) Latin names.

So, want to know these names? Here goes: Camissoniopsis cheiranthifolia. Then just listing the genus: Camissonia, Oenothera, Agassizia, Holostigma, Sphaerostigma. Six names in total! Could be even more. Obviously, we can't deal with them all. We'll just pick the most popular one: beach suncup or Camissonia cheiranthifolia.

It first forms a rosette and then shoot out a long stem from it.

Beach suncup (Camissonia cheiranthifolia)

Notice that beach suncup like its desert relative has red spots on the petals (never mind the bug):

Camissonia cheiranthifolia. Notice red spot on the petals.

And here is a picture of Sierra suncup, a plant often seen in a desert:

Sierra suncup (Camissonia sierrae) in the desert