Clarkia biloba
species of plant
Clarkia biloba is a species of flowering plant in the evening primrose family known by the common name twolobe clarkia and two lobed clarkia.
Clarkia biloba is endemic to California, where it is known from the Sierra Nevada foothills; one subspecies can also be found in the San Francisco Bay Area. It grows in chaparral, oak woodlands, and yellow pine forest habitats.
As the putative progenitor species of Clarkia lingulata it is often used in examples of evolution outside the usual model of allopatric speciation. As such this plant is one of the best plant examples when considering "quantum speciation", a concept closely aligned with peripatric speciation, parapatric speciation and sympatric speciation.
Description
Clarkia biloba is an annual herb producing an erect stem approaching 1 metre (3.3 ft) in maximum height. The leaves are linear to lance-shaped and up to 6 centimeters long. Each is borne on a short petiole.
The top of the erect stem is occupied by the inflorescence, which bears hanging buds above open flowers. The pink or red-purple sepals remain fused as the petals spread and emerge from one side of the bud.
“Clarkia biloba” enters the record as species of plant. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Clarkia, biloba and species can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Clarkia biloba” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Clarkia, biloba and species provides the most credible route into that argument.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 25, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5127535. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
Current terminology should not be projected backward without checking the classification used when the underlying evidence was created. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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This entry incorporates text from “Clarkia biloba” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.