Delphinium parishii (desert larkspur)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Delphinium parishii, photographed by velodrome — fig. a velodrome, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-14 / obs. 202593448

Delphinium parishii, photographed by Gerard Walschlager — fig. b Gerard Walschlager, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 43508668

Delphinium parishii, photographed by CK2AZ — fig. c CK2AZ, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 7452850

Delphinium parishii, photographed by W. Terry Hunefeld — fig. d W. Terry Hunefeld, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 6659399

Delphinium parishii, photographed by Jim Morefield — fig. e Jim Morefield, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 22826997

Delphinium parishii, photographed by Sula Vanderplank — fig. f Sula Vanderplank, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205165965

Delphinium parishii, photographed by Matt Berger — fig. g Matt Berger, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 198398724

Delphinium parishii, photographed by Dee Shea Himes — fig. h Dee Shea Himes, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 197129318

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.

Native range 5 botanical countries

Native distribution of Delphinium parishii, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Arizona	ARI	NORTHERN AMERICA
California	CAL
Mexico Northwest	MXN
Nevada	NEV
Utah	UTA

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 409 in flower of 450 examined

14%

89%

93%

99%

96%

Proportion of examined Delphinium parishii in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	0	4	too few examined
Feb	2	14	14%	4% to 40%
Mar	58	65	89%	79% to 95%
Apr	170	182	93%	89% to 96%
May	154	155	99%	96% to 100%
Jun	24	25	96%	80% to 99%
Jul	1	1	too few examined
Aug	0	0	too few examined
Sep	0	0	too few examined
Oct	0	0	too few examined
Nov	0	3	too few examined
Dec	0	1	too few examined

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Delphinium parishii observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 409 of 450 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 7 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 12 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.

Delphinium amabile Tidestr.
Delphinium amabile subsp. apachense (Eastw.) Ewan
Delphinium amabile subsp. clarianum Ewan
Delphinium amabile subsp. pallidum Ewan
Delphinium apachense Eastw.
Delphinium coelestinum Rydb.
Delphinium collinum Ewan
Delphinium parishii subsp. parishii
Delphinium parishii var. pallidum Munz
Delphinium parryi subsp. subglobosum (Wiggins) Lewis & Epl.
Delphinium parryi var. subglobosum (Wiggins) Munz
Delphinium subglobosum Wiggins

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

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