Yellow Nightshade, Ground Cherry
Physalis crassifolia
Color: Yellow
Common name: Yellow Nightshade, Ground Cherry
Latin name: Physalis crassifolia
Family: SOLANACEAE
Height: < 32 inches
Description: This is a perennial herb or subshrub producing a ridged, angular, branching stem taking a clumped, matted, or erect form. The yellow flowers growing from the leaf axils are widely bell-shaped, vaguely five-lobed, and around 2 centimeters wide. The star-shaped calyx of sepals at the base of the flower enlarges as the fruit develops, becoming an inflated, angled lanternlike structure about 2 centimeters long which contains the berry.
Leaf: The fleshy oval leaves are 1-3 cm long and have smooth, wavy, or bluntly toothed edges. The herbage is glandular and coated in short hairs.
Range: Desert, Peninsular Ranges, s East of Sierra Nevada
Habitat: Gravelly to rocky flats, washes, slopes
Elevation: < 1300 m.
Flowering time: Mar–May
Notes: Physalis crassifolia, a dicot, is an annual or perennial herb that is native to California and is also found outside of California, but is confined to western North America.
We have an online wildflower field guide that is designed to help you identify desert wildflowers by color, scientific name, region and common name. The pictures are sized to work on the iPod, iPhone, iPad and similar devices. With your iPod or phone you will easily be able to identify wildflowers while in the desert. Links for downloads are on the bottom of the Wildflower Field Guide page.
Photo tips: Most digital point-and-shoot cameras have a macro function - usually symbolized by the icon of a little flower. When you turn on that function, you allow your camera to get closer to the subject, looking into a flower for example. Or getting up close and personal with a bug. More on desert photography.
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