25 Beautiful Types of Orange Wildflowers

The world is filled with an incredible diversity of flowering plant life that, from season to season, fills nearly every available habitat with color. From baby blues to alluring reds and vibrant yellows, wildflowers represent virtually every color known. In this article, we’ll talk about 20 particularly beautiful species of orange wildflowers found around the world. We’ll talk about where and when they bloom, what roles they might fill in their natural habitats, and find out some interesting facts about each one.

1. Orange Mountain Dandelion (Agoseris aurantiaca)

Bearing remarkable similarity to the common dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), the orange mountain dandelion (Agoseris aurantiaca) is only distantly related. Though both belong to the daisy family, Asteraceae, the orange mountain dandelion’s range extends into drier regions where common dandelions would struggle. Additionally, this species is native to North America whereas the common dandelion is a naturalized European species. Like all members of the daisy family, each of the mountain dandelion’s orange “petals” is actually a tiny, individual flower called a floret. The species differs from many of its relatives in that it does not have a central set of tubular disk florets. Instead, the entire flower head consists of strap-like ray florets.

2. Spotted Jewelweed (Impatiens capensis)

Also known as the orange balsam, the spotted jewelweed is gorgeous from the time it sprouts in the spring. The plant most likely gets the name jewelweed from the way its smooth leaves iridesce after a rain or beneath the morning dew. In the summer, the plant’s bright orange, cornucopia-shaped flowers attract bees and hummingbirds, who relish their sweet nectar. As the flowers fade in the fall, they give way to some of the most exciting and perhaps startling seed pods around. When handled or brushed against, the mature pods explode, launching the plant’s seeds into the environment! Check out the short video below to see one burst in slow motion.

3. Orange Daylily (Hemerocallis fulva)

Though some gardeners may be familiar with this species of daylily as a garden cultivar, it exists independently in the wild as well. The species originated in Asia, with a wide natural range spanning from the Caucasus Mountains into China, Korea, and Japan. Today, the species also runs wild in Europe, where it has been naturalized for several centuries, and across large swathes of North America. In the United States, the orange daylily (Hemerocallis fulva) appears throughout the Eastern Seaboard, with some states considering it highly invasive. While this may suggest that their flowers are a common sight, finding them at their peak can be a fun challenge as each bloom lasts only one day.

4. Butterfly Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa)

Butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) attracts many pollinators from spring to summer. From flies to moths to butterflies, pollinating insects flock to its blooms to take advantage of their bountiful nectar. One species of butterfly in particular, the monarch butterfly, relies heavily on this milkweed through multiple stages of its lifecycle. During its larval stage, as a caterpillar, the monarch relies on milkweeds as its sole food source. As it eats the foliage, it accumulates the plant’s defensive toxins and becomes poisonous itself, retaining this characteristic into adulthood. There are multiple species of milkweed, but this one in particular produces large cymes of primarily orange, red, and yellow flowers.

5. Tawny Hawkweed (Pilosella aurantiaca)

Also known as fox-and-cubs, these orange wildflowers spring up natively across Europe, especially in high-altitude areas. They are prolific summer bloomers and produce inflorescences that range in color from dark orange to bright orange-yellow, even producing variegated blooms in some instances. During the summer, it bears its bright flowers high above its basal rosette.

Tawny hawkweed is regularly grown outside of its native range as a field wildflower or garden ornamental. As usually follows the planting of non-native plants outdoors, the species has escaped cultivation and become naturalized across the northern and eastern United States as well as much of Canada and Japan.

6. Desert Globemallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua)

While not all desert globemallows produce orange flowers, those that do are especially brilliant against their arid backdrop. The blooms, which measure about an inch and a half in diameter, appear in large panicles atop the plant’s many tall stems. Though they tend to flower most abundantly in the late winter and early spring, these wildflowers will continue to produce inflorescences year-round if rainwater permits. Desert globemallows are early succession plants and are especially good at responding to disturbances in an area. If you’re in or are visiting the U.S. Southwest, look for them along dry, rocky slopes, clearings, and roadsides at lower elevations. They also tend to crop up around desert scrub containing creosote bush, brittlebush, and ocotillo.

7. Calendula (Calendula officinalis)

This orange wildflower is also a popular houseplant owing to its gorgeous composite blooms. It is a short-lived, herbaceous perennial belonging to the daisy family, Asteraceae, and appears throughout the world’s warm-temperate regions. The exact origin of the species is uncertain due to its global popularity in the garden, but botanists expect that it first cropped up in southern Europe. Inflorescence color can vary, but many plants produce orange-gold disk flowers with bright orange or yellow ray flowers.

8. Tiger Lily (Lilium lancifolium)

If you’re familiar with the tiger lily (Lilium lancifolium) as a highly decorative garden cultivar, you may be surprised to know that it exists in this form in the wild too. The species grows free and wild across much of Asia, from China, Japan, and Korea to Eastern Russia. The tiger lily produces incredibly ornamental blooms with long stamens and black spots that give them the appearance of tiger fur. All of the plant’s flowers face downward, allowing their reproductive parts to hang beneath them. This orientation makes them especially well-suited for pollination by butterflies, who visit them to feed on their nectar.

9. Wood Lily (Lilum philidelphicum)

These summer-blooming beauties enjoy a wide native range in North America. They pop up in the wild throughout most of Canada and the United States, from the Northeast, southward through the Appalachians, and westward to the Rockies. Despite their large distribution, however, they are considered endangered in many locations. Populations in the southeast are becoming especially scarce due to suburban sprawl, logging and clear-cutting, plant poaching, and roadside mowing. Look for them in grasslands, old fields, and along roadways and disturbed habitats where they crop up in the spring and early summer, usually from April to June.

10. Orange Sneezeweed (Hymenoxis hoopesii)

Orange sneezeweed belongs to the family Asteraceae and, as you might suspect, is related to the sunflowers. These flowers have long, spaced-out, and drooping ray flowers that surround their characteristically thick central disk. Wild sneezeweed may be bright yellow, orange, or somewhere in between and, depending on the location, may even take on more red-orange hues. Flower heads open continuously and at different times throughout the summer and fall in a range of habitats throughout the western United States. They tend to be abundant in moist fields and meadows but will also grow in open woodland habitats.

11. Desert Paintbrush (Castilleja chromosa)

While the blooms of the desert paintbrush are certainly attractive against the arid desert backdrop, it isn’t the flowers themselves that produce their painted color. In fact, it is the plant’s bracts and sepals, both modified leaves, that have adapted to attract its pollinators. The true flowers are narrow, green, tubular, and comparatively inconspicuous. More or less all of the species in the genus behave this way. Interestingly, these plants are also parasitic, able to penetrate and siphon nutrients from the roots of other plants nearby. Most castillejas are not choosy about their host plants and are often found thriving alongside other plants in a community.

12. Firewheel (Gaillardia pulchella)

Sometimes referred to as Indian Blanket, the firewheel is a breathtaking composite wildflower in the Asteraceae family. Once appearing primarily in Mexico and the southwestern and south-central United States, it has naturalized on the East Coast and in Canada as well. These plants favor sandy, well-drained soils and are important sources of nectar for pollinating insects. They also play host to the larvae of the bordered patch butterfly (Chlosyne lacinia), which feed on its foliage before pupating. Later in the year, the fruits that develop from pollinated disc florets become an important food source for small birds.

13. California Poppy (Eschscholzia californica)

The state flower of California, the California poppy lights up the spring and summer. Everywhere it grows, its bright orange blossoms are a reminder of the warmth and breath of life that accompany the turn of the seasons. During their peak, the blooms fill fields and roadsides with waves of brilliant orange and sometimes yellow or red. Once limited to the western part of North America, the California poppy has become naturalized throughout most of the United States. Where winters are mild, individual poppy plants may persist for several years before dying. They will also readily self-seed, with fruits exhibiting explosive dehiscence just like that of jewelweed. In locations where winters are cold, the species behaves as an annual, regrowing from seed each spring.

14. Orange Milkwort (Polygala lutea)

A native to the coastal plains of the United States, these tiny wildflowers appear from spring to autumn along the East Coast and into Alabama and Louisiana. They are quite small, growing in dense, compact clusters that measure less than an inch in diameter. Despite their tiny size, however, they are quite eye-catching mixed in with other bog flora and along the floors of moist hardwood or conifer forests. The orange coloration of this species is uncommon among milkworts, with most others producing flowers that are white, pink, or yellow.

15. Texas Lantana (Lantana urticoides)

The Texas lantana is an incredibly hardy member of the verbena family, Verbenaceae. It thrives in a variety of soil conditions throughout Texas, with peak flower production taking place during the heat of mid-summer. The species is most common along the coast, where it relishes full or partial sun and poor, heavily sandy soils. During the summer bloom period, Texas lantana produces gorgeous fireball-like clusters of trumpet-shaped flowers that change radially from orange to red. These gorgeous wildflowers are quite attractive to butterflies, whose long proboscises can easily reach into the flowers’ centers. Once the flowers have been pollinated and give way to their drupes later in the season, they also become an important food source for birds.

16. Orange Wild Tulip (Tulipa orphanidea)

The emergence of garden tulips from their bulbs points to the arrival of spring, and these wild tulips are no different. As the soil temperature begins to rise, the bulbs produce their long leaves and, eventually, their beautiful orange wildflowers. Each star-shaped bloom consists of two whorls of brightly-colored tepals which often have dark blotches at the base. Indistinguishable from either petals or sepals, these tepals make up the flower’s corolla and serve to attract the plant’s pollinators. Though they can be found across the world today as ornamentals, the orange wild tulip originated in the Balkan Peninsula, in Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey.

17. Chinese Lantern (Physalis alkekengi)

The Chinese lantern is a beautiful flowering plant in the nightshade family, Solanaceae. While its flowers themselves are creamy and white, the resultant fruit-bearing structures are a brilliant orange. These delicate husks are persistent for several months as the fruit inside develops, crumbling away to skeletons in fall. They appear in the wild throughout southern Europe and much of Asia and are distantly related to multiple North American species of American ground cherries or wild tomatillos. The Chinese lantern is also a popular garden plant, cultivated as an ornamental for its striking husks. Like nearly all exotic ornamentals, this species has escaped cultivation and is considered invasive in many locations. In addition to its ability to reseed, it spreads fairly aggressively via its underground rhizomes.

18. Spreading Fanpetals (Sida abutifolia)

Also known as the spreading sida, this species of orange wildflower is native to South Florida, Mexico, and Central and South America. It has also been introduced throughout the U.S. Southwest. Spreading sida (Sida abutifolia) is a low-growing species of the mallow family, forming tiny, trailing stems that grow in close contact with the ground. These plants spring up in dry, sandy habitats among desert scrub plants along roadsides, mesas, and desert borders. Beginning in the spring, plants may produce single, orange flowers in the leaf axils toward the end of each stem. Each five-petaled flower is bright orange, peach, or yellowish in color and is generally variegated. Like other members of the mallow family, the flowers bear stamens that fuse into a central cylinder that surrounds the style.

19. Thurber’s Desert Honeysuckle (Anisacanthus therberi)

In contrast to the prostrate habit of the spreading sida, the desert honeysuckle (Anisacanthus therberi) produces a woody perennial shrub that can grow to more than 6 feet in height. A member of the acanthus family, Acanthaceae, this species grows in a narrow range in southwestern North America. It is fairly rare in the United States, cropping up only in New Mexico and Arizona, but appears in greater numbers throughout northern Mexico. The small, tubular, red-orange or orange flowers begin blooming in spring and may continue to do so throughout the year as long as there is adequate rain. Their sweet nectar attracts butterflies and hummingbirds, who inadvertently transfer pollen between flowers as they feed.

21. Nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus)

The common nasturtium is a familiar sight in many parts of the world. Though it originated in Central and South America, it has since seen introduction and naturalization as far away as Australia, Africa, and Asia. It grows readily throughout California in the United States, as well as many states along the eastern seaboard. It is a peculiar-looking plant, with five-petaled, cornucopia-shaped flowers that arise from within groups of pad-shaped foliage. The orange wildflowers that appear for several months out of the year attract bees, moths, and butterflies. They are especially attractive to hummingbirds, who may become quite territorial over them as other blooms begin to fade. The leaves, stalks, and flowers are also edible by humans and have a uniquely peppery taste.