Here it is: the third and last of my mystery wildflowers. It looks fairly ordinary, but for some reason I was never quite able to match it up with anything in my Orange County wildflower book. What does the hive mind think of this?
Lunchtime Photo
5 thoughts on “Lunchtime Photo”
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If you want to cheat, this is an excellent resource:
identify.plantnet(dot)org
https://identify.plantnet.org
I've used it a lot and am impressed with its accuracy.
Ran Kevin's excellent picture through plantnet and looks to me that it's the highest probability match (17.99%):
Wikipedia
Erodium malacoides is a species of flowering plant in the geranium family known by the common names Mediterranean stork's bill, soft stork's-bill and oval heron's bill. This is an annual or biennial herb which is native to much of Eurasia and North Africa but can be found on most continents where it is an introduced species.
The young plant grows a number of ruffled green leaves radially outward flat against the ground from a knobby central stem. The stem may eventually reach half a meter in height with more leaves on long, hairy petioles. It bears small flowers with fuzzy, soft spine-tipped sepals and five lavender to magenta petals. The fruit is green with a glandular body about half a centimeter long and a long, pointed style two to three centimeters in length.
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Kevin's picture clearly shows "soft spine-tipped sepals" (light brown, behind the lavender petals).
Nice bokeh...but we might need the leaves to help with the ID 😉
Should note, not sure if leaves in background associated the the flowers.
Comparing the picture through Lens agrees that it's some kind of bird's bill -- heron, crane, stork depending on the local culture -- more formally known as erodium malacoides. Non-native.
Redstem stork’s bill, erodium cicutarium