10/15/2026
It’s time to start planting seed of Mexican poppies (Eschacholtzia californica subsp. mexicana.
In Arizona the native poppy is the Mexican poppy—not to be confused with the Arizona poppy which isn’t even a poppy at all, but a plant in the same family as creosote bush and goat’s head w**d (look up Kallstroemia).
To the lay person would be almost identical to that plant called the California poppy (Eschscholtzia californica subsp. californica). Our native species in southern Arizona is differentiated by being slightly a smaller plant, which is lacking a pronounced ridge at the base of the flower (see images below). Their geography is also different: subspecies mexicana is generally found to the east of the sierras in California (the mountains that also contribute to the aridity of Arizona). The subspecies californica is found on the west side of those sierras. Also, the California poppy can sometimes become a perennial, whereas the Mexican poppy is always annual.
Mexican poppies are cool season annuals which you can plant from seed or plant as early as September or October, and continually throughout the cool season, as late as early March. Plants planted toward the end of the cool season will be shorter when they bloom. Grow in full sun with regular water and they should last until it gets hot or if soil dries out. Plants reseed readily and may re-emerge in the fall in moist locations.
Butterflies and bees love the flowers and the plant is a larval food plant for several metalmarks, blues, and moth species. As with all cool season annuals, many insects have evolved with the timing of the bloom cycle, and thus depend on these plants as resources.
Mexican poppy is found usually on sandy or gravelly soil, and now on roadsides, widespread to 4,500 ft mostly in Arizona, but also to the east of the mountains in southern California, southern Nevada and Utah, eastern New Mexico, and in northern Mexico, especially Sonora.
