aurea, with the common name golden stars, is a variety of Bloomeria that is endemic to California.

aurea grows in dry flats and hillsides, and grassy slopes and ridges often in heavy soils and especially in foothill woods, up to 1500 meters in elevation.

Golden stars grow in the coastal sage scrub, chaparral, valley grassland and oak woodland plant communities from Baja California in Mexico, to Santa Barbara and Kern Counties in central California.

The flowers are yellow and have six equal divisions with six stamens and slender filaments (which if they are looked carefully under a microscope, a short, two-toothed, hairy appendage can be seen at their base).

The plant which can grow from six to eighteen inches has long, narrow, grasslike leaf with large flower-cluster which can contain around fifty blossoms.