Named for Ludolf Karl Adelbert von Chamisso (1781-1838), who was a botanist on the ship Rurik which visited California in 1816, and who named the California poppy for his friend Dr. Johann Friedrich Gustav von Eschscholtz
Species
claviformis
From the Latin for “club-shaped,” with reference to the capsules
ssp.
peirsonii
After Frank Warrington Peirson (1865-1951), a California collector who who worked mostly in the San Gabriel Mountains and Inyo County with his half-sister Mable Burnham Peirson, a high school biology teacher
