Cuscuta californicaHook. & Arn.

California dodder

WFO wfo-0001297199 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Cuscuta californica, photographed by Madeleine Claire
fig. a Madeleine Claire, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-04 / obs. 203605809
Cuscuta californica, photographed by Cricket Raspet
fig. b Cricket Raspet, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202321749
Cuscuta californica, photographed by Cricket Raspet
fig. c Cricket Raspet, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 187855404
Cuscuta californica, photographed by Amy
fig. d Amy, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 126170056
Cuscuta californica, photographed by Amanda Fisher
fig. e Amanda Fisher, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 127218049
Cuscuta californica, photographed by Gail A Baker
fig. f Gail A Baker, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 188273326
Cuscuta californica, photographed by gnyquist
fig. g gnyquist, CC0 1.0 / obs. 126740848
Cuscuta californica, photographed by Tom and T Herman
fig. h Tom and T Herman, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 175460050

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 300 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 300 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 4 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Cuscuta acuminata Nutt. ex Engelm.
  • Cuscuta californica var. graciliflora Engelm.
  • Cuscuta californica var. longiloba Engelm.
  • Grammica californica Hadač & Chrtek

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.