Collinsia heterophylla, known as purple Chinese houses or innocence, is a flowering plant native to California and the Peninsular Ranges in northern Baja California.
Collinsia heterophylla is an annual plant growing in shady places, 10cm-50cmcm (00inches-20inchescm) in height. It can be found in most of California (other than desert regions) below about .
It blooms from mid spring to early summer. Like other species in the genus Collinsia, which also includes the blue-eyed Marys, it gets its name from its towers of inflorescences of decreasing diameter, which give the plants in full flower a certain resemblance to a pagoda.
Dried in air, the seeds weigh about 1 mg each.
The species was first described as Collinsia bicolor by George Bentham in 1835, but this name proved to be a later homonym of Collinsia bicolor Raf. (described in 1824), necessitating the name change to C. heterophylla. Despite this, the name C. bicolor is still sometimes used in references.[3]