Stems usually purplish, 4-10 dm, with 120-500 prickles per cm² on main stem below capsule, longest prickles 4-6 mm. Leaf blades: surfaces usually densely prickly on veins and intervein areas. Inflorescences: bud prickles sometimes branched. Capsules usually densely prickly, surface partially obscured, prickles unequal, longest to 8 mm. 2 n = 28. Flowering spring-fall; fruiting summer-fall. Open slopes and foothills, full sun; 1200-2500 m; Ariz., Calif., Idaho, Nev., Oreg., Utah.

STEMS: usually purplish, with 25-100 perpendicular or declinate prickles per square cm of surface, the largest 4-6 nun long. LEAVES: prickly on and between the veins, about 50-100 prickles per square cm below, 30-100 above; lobes less than one-half to twice as long as wide, mostly broader than the sinuses. FLOWER: buds obovate; calyx with 80-120 or more spreading or ascending prickles per sepal, the largest prickles sometimes compound, the sepal horn 6-7 nun long, with about 10-15 prickles near its base, angular in cross-section, the base of the apical prickle flattened and indurated. CAPSULES: mostly ovate, with 60-100 prickles per square cm of surface, the largest prickles 6-8 nun long. 2n = 28. NOTES: See also the parent taxon for further description. Deserts and slopes: Coconino, Maricopa, Mohave cos.; 1200-2600 m (4000-8500 ft); May; CA, NV, OR, nUT. REFERENCES: Ownbey, Gerald B., Jeffrey W. Brasher, and Curtis Clark. 1998 Papaveraceae. J. Ariz. – Nev. Acad. Sci. 30(2): 120.