Menzies’ Larkspur Seeds (Delphinium menziesii)

The most vibrant population of Menzies’ larkspur we’ve ever encountered was in a low, sandy coastal back dune, a stone’s throw from a small acrid-smelling lagoon. It’s the kind of windy site where most things prefer not to grow, where ancient brickwork and rusted machinery were dumped decades earlier, where even the gulls don’t loiter. The ground is a hard matrix of stunted plantain and biocrust. Every few years, seawater overtops the dune, sweeping things away. Saline intrusion in the soil is omnipresent.

In this place, at odd irregular intervals, every few years inky blue and violet spires of this plant arise from the harshness like an unreal vision, small and tenacious, but saturated with color like no other plant on earth. Other years, the plants don’t appear at all.

Knowing Menzies’ larkspur in this way, it’s surreal to see it grown in more favorable garden soils, where it leafs-out lavishly, growing itself into magnificent 3-foot-tall lush specimens, adorned with the most incredible profusion of flowers – putting ornamental nursery plants to shame with their comparative drabness.

Menzies’ larkspur can live in both of these kinds of spaces – the harshness of a coastal back dune and a fertile sunny garden in North Portland. It’s native from British Columbia to California, mostly west of the Cascades. It can tolerant flat land and slopes alike. It’s at home on sunny, windswept coastal bluffs and in open oak savannas. It calls to the bees, the Anthophra and Bombus. Its alkaloids deter deer and rabbit browsing. The flowers appear in spring, often not for long, but long enough to create an unshakable memory of that intense blue, like something from Yves Klein’s deepest imaginings.

Menzie’s larkspur prefers sun, warmth, and freedom from excessive competition. It enjoys the occasional companionship of short fescues, barestem biscuitroot, nodding pink onion, and checker lilies.

Approximately 50 to 100 seeds (0.2 grams)