Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz

California Poppy Day: The Golden Bloom of the West

California poppies (Eschscholzia californica), the state flower of California.

Poppy Day April 6, 2010 Every year since 2010, April 6 is California Poppy Day celebrating the California State Flower. Back in 1903, the botanist Sara Plummer Lemmon created legislation to make the golden poppy (Eschscholzia californica) the state flower of California. The botanical name Eschscholzia comes from a last name. In 1817, a Russian…

Count Nikolay Rumyantsev: Russian Patron of Exploration and the California Poppy’s Namesake

Count Nikolay Rumyantsev thumbnail image

Funded the Rurik Today is the birthday of a man who was the foreign minister of Russia, Count Nikolay Rumyantsev. In 1815, he funded the round the world scientific voyage of the Rurik which included the poet and botanist Adelbert von Chamisso (“Sha-ME-So”) and a doctor/surgeon named Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz. Two years later, in…

Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz: The Botanist Behind California’s Golden Poppy

Eschscholzia California Today is the birthday of Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz, who was born on this day in 1793. When the German poet Adelbert van Chamiso ended up in the San Francisco Bay area, and he wrote about the California poppy, which he named Eschscholzia California after his friend Johann Friedrich Von Eschscholz. In return, Eschscholz named…