Hardiness zones
Sunset 10-13
USDA 9 - 10
Landscape Use: Wildflower gardens, rock gardens, winter color accent
Form & Character: Upright and spreading, tender, calm yet mysterious.
Growth Habit: Cool season annual, 8" to 24" tall
Foliage/Texture: Ellipsoid leaves with serrate margins, sometimes tinged purple with silver streaking, medium texture
Flowers & Fruits: Flowers are deep blue with fused petals, bell shaped, fruit inconspicuous, seed small black
Seasonal Color: Late winter to spring flowering accent. Flowers last about 4 weeks usually around the month of March.
Temperature: Best from 32o to 80oF
Light: Full sun in winter
Soil: Tolerant
Watering: Treat desert bluebells as a winter native wildflower and irrigate only if winter rains fail.
Pruning: None. Allow plants to completely set seed and die before removal. Upon removal, treat roughly to distribute seed.
Propagation: Sow seed, 3 lbs per acre, in fall at 1/16" depth. Optimum soil temperature for germination is between 60 and 70oF, usually in late November to December in Phoenix. If plants are allowed to senesce and seed to disperse in late spring, then plants will re-emerge the next late fall and winter when soils are made moist.
Disease and pests: None
Additional comments: Desert bluebells is a wonderful blue flowering accent plant that compliments all the warm-colored wildflowers
for winter wildflower gardens in the Desert Southwest. Culture of California
desert bluebells in landscapes is the same as E. californica (california poppy).
Special note: Desert blue bells can produce a vesicular dermatitis resembling poison ivy or oak, especially amongst people that are sensitive to poison ivy or oak. Walking amongst these beautiful desert annuals plants and/or handling the plants when they are flowering or fruiting produces a dermatitis of the lower limbs and on the hands. How do I know? I am one of those "sensitive" ones who has broken out with the "itch".....and believe me it is intense and lasts for about a week. The key is in knowing that the dermal irritant (toxin) resides in their viscid glandular hairs which are most numerous on the flower and fruiting stalks.
