Indian Pink

      Silene californica


      
California's silenes are our closest equivalent
      to the Old World pinks or dianthuses and, like them, have slender
      tubular partly fused sepals and (usually) fringed petals. The
      word "pink", in fact, refers to this fringing of the
      petals rather than to flower color. Indian pink sprouts a circle
      of floppy stems from a central, deep-seated root system. The
      fire-engine-red blossoms, often measuring an inch-and-a-half
      across, don't appear until May or June, and are powerful lures
      to hummingbirds. Indian pink appears in a variety of habitats,
      sometimes fully exposed rocky places as on Ring Mt. on the Tiburon
      Peninsula; other times in light woodland as on the wooded ridges
      of Armstrong Redwoods State Reserve.

 
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