Home » Plants & Animals » North American Wildflowers » Larkspurs

Larkspurs

© Gregg Pasterick

I was paging through a field guide the other day and some dried leaves fell out. They were larkspur leaves, from species I came across last spring in California.

Larkspurs ... many of them anyway ... are too difficult for me to I.D. without consulting a field guide, and it always boils down the leaves. Even then, I sometimes can do no better than narrow it down to two or three species. For me, they are as difficult to pin a name on, as they are surprising and beautiful.

Larkspurs, or delphiniums, which is also their generic name, are members of the Buttercup Family (Ranunculaceae), and very successful ones at that. They can be found worldwide, Australia and the polar regions being the only places they aren't native to. And as garden specimens they are among the most popular, with many hybrids and cultivars. They are so popular because of their brightly colored flowers, which grow in big, showy spikes. These spikes, or inflorescences fall under two categories: the Belladonna Group and the Elatum Group. The flowery spikes of the Belladonna Group are loose and branched; those of the Elatum Group are much taller - up to six feet tall in some species - and are crammed with many more flowers. These are the varieties that are the most popular with gardeners, while the former represent most of our native species.

Like so many wildflower species, there seems to be many, many more kinds of larkspur west of the Rockies than in the east. Actually, only three come to mind; two of them are spring bloomers.

Dwarf Larkspur (D. tricorne) was one of those wildflowers in my annual parade of spring wildflowers in Ohio. Its open cluster of velvety purple flowers was always a treat, and the family resemblance was obvious in its deeply lobed leaves.

The flowers are smallish, up to about ¾" across. The five sepals are the big showy swatches of color, while the 4 petals are very small, with the upper one enclosed in the calyx spur. It grows in rich woods from Pennsylvania down to Georgia, and west from Arkansas and Oklahoma through Nebraska and into Minnesota.

The other spring blooming eastern species is Prairie Larkspur (D. virescens); it has white to pale blue to greenish flowers. It can be found in dry, open woods as well as prairies from Manitoba and northwestern Wisconsin down through the guts of the U.S. into Texas. Its blooming period stretches from May into July.