This wildflower is native to California and Baja California, where it grows on coastal, inland, and desert chaparral slopes, such as the Colorado Desert, and the Peninsular and Transverse Ranges.

This tall larkspur grows on an erect stem which often exceeds two meters (~6 ft.) in height.

The top of the thin stem is occupied by many widely spaced flowers, each at the end of a pedicel several centimeters long.

Each flower has scarlet red sepals which are generally curled forward into a bowl shape.

Since D. cardinale does not seem to have been associated either with folk-medicinal usage or livestock-poisoning, it has been the object of only limited chemical study: in 1966, Mike Benn of the University of Calgary in Canada isolated the following diterpenoid alkaloids from the above-ground parts of D. cardinale plants collected in California: browniine; dehydrobrowniine; hetisine; dehydrohetisine and lycoctonine.