Common Names: creamcups poppy
Flowers: 6 white to cream-colored unfused petals. solitary & terminal on long, almost leafless stems
Description: up to 1' tall

This highly variable, wind-pollinated taxon has been split into as many as 57 species on the basis of characteristics showing little cohesiveness. Ecotypic variation has produced morphologic extremes ranging from semisucculent, nearly glabrous coastal forms to very robust, moderately pubescent plants of interior grassland to compact, densely pubescent plants of semidesert habitats (G. L. Hannan 1979, 1982). Several varieties are recognized in some currently used floras: Platystemon californicus var. ciliatus Dunkle, from Santa Barbara Island; P . californicus var. nutans M. Brandegee, from coastal San Diego County and Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz islands; and P . californicus var. ornithopus (Greene) Munz, from San Miguel, San Nicholas, and Santa Rosa islands. These geographically restricted morphotypes appear to result from the same sort of ecotypic variation found in many other parts of the range. Rather than naming each ecotype, it seems best to treat Platystemon as a single, highly variable species with many locally adapted, intergrading populations.
Source: efloras org