The Evening News. November 2, 1916

29. How The Eschscholtzia Was Named

In 1816 there came to San Jose from San Francisco a Russian scientific expedition which changed the name of the beautiful copo de oro, otherwise the golden California poppy, to the Eschscholtzia Californica. Whether we ought to be grateful to this scientific expedition for having burdened the beautiful, innocent flower with such a name is a question, but it is a part of history, and this is how it happened.

The Spanish people had been content with calling the poppy the torona, the toronja or the dormidera, or the copo de oro. The Spanish bookish name was copo de oro, which means cup of gold. I rather prefer the mere common Spanish usage, the dormidera (the sleepy one). This name sprang from the habit that the poppy has of taking a nap late in the afternoon. The Spanish Californians used the poppy as a soporific. It was a pain killer and a family medicine. Probably the American would have always called the sleepy one the poppy but for the Kotzehue scientific expedition.

These learned men arrived in San Francisco on a ship called the Rurik. Otto von Kotzebue, the explorer, was in command. With him was Adalbert von Chamisso, a French noble by birth, a Prussian solder by education, a botanist by choice and a poet by inspiration. Another great naturalist of the expedition was Dr. Johann Friederich Eschscholz, who is responsible for the poor golden sleepy one's new name.

The Kotzebue expedition remained one month in San Francisco and vicinity. They had a desire to venture into the unexplored part of California, and so, after a wild trip down the coast, they landed at Alviso. They came to San Jose and went to the Mission Santa Clara.

Though the scientists' were disappointed in the beauty of the country, they wrote three books about it. On a previous expedition a scientist who had come with Rezanov, the Czar's Court Chamberlain, to San Francisco called San Francisco and vicinity a flower garden. Chamisso mentions this and writes of his disappointment in the beauty of the flowers. Of course the Kotzebue expedition came during the winter season, and they saw nothing at its best. "However," wrote Chamisso, "we collected many seeds of many plants, and we expect to enrich our gardens thereby."

Indeed, from this expedition resulted not only the name of the poppy, but its introduction to European gardens.

Not till four years later, in 1820, did Chamisso write of the sleepy one of California. Then in Madrid in the "Horae physicae" of the Spaniard, Luis Nee Chamisso invented the name "Eschscholtzia Californica" in honor of "the very skillful, very learned, very amicable Eschscholz, Doctor of Medicine and equally expert in botany and entomology."

The Eschscholtzia Californica is almost exclusively in its wild state indigenous to this soil. It grows occasionally in Oregon, Washington, upper Mexico and the Great Basin. It belongs in reality to California, where it used to thrive in such quantities that acres of its golden blossoms could be seen at a distance of twenty-five miles. It is a pity that California cannot even after a hundred years give the sleepy one a pleasing name, at least one that can be spelled without a dictionary.

Transcribed by Kitty LaFavor, for the Santa Clara Co. CAGenWeb Project. 2008