San Joaquin silverpuffs facts for kids

Microseris campestris, also known as San Joaquin silverpuffs, is a type of flowering plant. It belongs to the aster family, which includes many well-known flowers like sunflowers and daisies. This plant is special because it grows only in California. You can find it in the San Joaquin Valley, the nearby Sierra Nevada mountains, and the central California Coast Ranges. It likes to grow in open areas like grasslands and on hillsides, sometimes even near vernal pools, which are temporary ponds that fill with water in the spring.

What is San Joaquin Silverpuffs?

Microseris campestris is an annual plant, which means it completes its whole life cycle in one year. It can grow up to about 1.5 feet (half a meter) tall. This plant doesn't have a main stem like many other plants. Instead, its leaves grow in a circle close to the ground, forming a "rosette." Each leaf can be up to 20 centimeters long and has many wavy or divided edges.

How Does the Plant Look?

The flowers of the San Joaquin silverpuffs grow on a stalk called a peduncle. This stalk comes directly from the ground, right from the center of the leafy rosette. Each flower head is actually made up of many tiny flowers, called ray florets. There can be up to 100 of these small flowers in one head, and they can be white or yellow.

Seeds and How They Spread

After the flowers bloom, the plant produces fruits. These fruits are called achenes, which are a type of dry, single-seeded fruit. The body of the fruit is usually gray or brown, sometimes with small speckles, and it's only a few millimeters long. At the very top of each fruit is a special structure called a pappus. This pappus is made of five long, stiff, and bristly scales. These scales act like a parachute, helping the seeds to float away in the wind and spread to new places.