The Wild Flower Hotline

Driving around Lake Kaweah in the southern Sierra foothills east of Visalia, the landscape is transitioning from early to mid-spring bloom. Eastwood’s fiddlenecks are fading, and the hillsides are shifting from deep gold to brilliant yellow as the madia comes into flower. Surprisingly early this year, the harbingers of summer—speckled clarkia are already starting to make bold splashes of pink on the sunnier slopes. Amidst the pinks and yellow, are occasional patches of orange foothill poppies and pale blue fiesta flowers. Here and there, purple pagodas in their royal purple cloaks, add to this colorful oak woodland landscape. Annual lupines of two varieties, spider lupine and miniature lupine decorate the roadsides and slopes in varying shades of blue. Around the lake, the silver bush lupine floral show is fading as their developing seed pods are growing fat and plump. Taking their place on rocky and shadier north-facing slopes are the bold yellow bush monkey flowers. Drive slowly to see that amongst the monkey flower, clinging to tiny rock crevices, are hundreds of canyon dudleya. Glowing with their bright orange candelabra-like blooms, they stand out dramatically against their chalky-white foliage. Most of the rock faces preferred by these two plants along with mats of rock lichens, display a burnished deep orange-red color making for quite an impressive presentation. There are also local geophytes in full bloom, including pink twining brodiaea [broh-dee-ah], buttery yellow pretty face and purple Ithuriel’s spear. While there are not a great number, this is one of the best places to find the elegant, and arguably the “queen” of Calochortus—pink fairy lanterns. Also coming into mid-spring bloom on sunny slopes and trails are diminutive blooming Heermann's golden sunburst, bird’s-eye gilia, tom cat clover and mustang clover. A few weeks ago, we reported on the devastation left by last summer’s Lake Fire on Figueroa Mountain in the Los Padres National Forest. Notably, poppies and lupines were emerging from the blackened landscape. While many mature trees and shrubs perished, the wildflower display currently is beyond belief! Look for regional fire-following annuals, including fiesta flowers, chia, goldfields, globe gilias, blue dicks, Mariposa lilies, miner’s lettuce, red skinned onions, various phacelias, silver puffs, chocolate lilies, yellow monkeyflowers, sky lupines, wallflowers California golden violets and many more. Some perennials are making their way back as well. Look for silver bush lupine, California buckwheat and bush poppy. Make the effort to visit before the weather gets hot. The iconic colors of California—the rich golds and blues—are unfurling through the gardens at the Theodore Payne Foundation. Joining the California poppies, fiddlenecks, sunflowers, and California sun cups are, this week, the Palo Verde trees now in glorious bloom. This palette of yellow gold is now coupled with desert bluebells, chia, several sage species and the electric blue showy penstemon. Cheery yellow blossoms of bush sunflower, canyon sunflower and Nevin’s barberry are brightening up pathways elsewhere. Trekking up Wildflower Hill adjacent to the sales yard, you will encounter fragrant Cedros Island verbena, woolly blue curls, and California four o’clock. Enjoy this explosion of color and by the way, many of these can also be purchased at the TPF plant sale this weekend!

Welcome to the Theodore Payne Foundation’s 42nd year of the Wildflower Hotline. The Hotline offers weekly on-line and recorded updates on the best locations for viewing spring wildflowers in Southern and Central California. All locations are on easily accessible public lands and range from urban to wild, distant to right here in L.A. Please support the Wildflower Hotline.The annual Open House events are scheduled at Prisk Native Garden for the next two Sundays, April 6th and April 13th from 1 to 4 pm. Please attend one of the Sunday dates or both! Visitors will learn about the 30-year-old Garden on a school campus in Long Beach that has a mission to engage children in nature’s joyful and restorative experiences. Overnight seemingly, because of mild warm temperatures following mid-March rain, there are colorful blossoms everywhere, with more coming each week. In addition to the ubiquitous California poppies. Arroyo lupine, and tidy tips, there are lovely patches of five-spot, mounds of baby blue-eyes, Mojave bluebells, and various fragrant sages. Dorr’s sage, for example, brings home the wild aroma of the high desert in spring bloom. Many members of the cactus family are beginning to pop in the Desert Wash section. The claret cup cactus and Engelmann's hedgehog are beaming with blossoms! Elsewhere, look for meadow foam in the shadier, moister areas. Shrubs in all the garden habitats have been flowering profusely, including Island bush poppy showing off their large, yellow flowers set upon elegant gray-green foliage, or hot pink flowers of fairy duster beaconing passing hummingbirds. This is just a tiny taste of the Garden’s color palette. Next week on Sunday April 13, these bountiful blooms and hopefully many more will be available for viewing for the second Open House event.A great place to enjoy a recreational spring fling is Pinnacles National Park. Signs of spring are everywhere. The geography of the park provides raptors with ideal nesting sites, both on the inaccessible cliffs, craggy rock formations and on the oaks and pines along the riparian corridors. Although some of the trails are closed during peak nesting season (check park website), you may spot prairie falcons, golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, and American kestrels to name a few. Entering the park at the Eastern portal, you can’t help but notice the large perennial silver bush lupines peppering the landscape. Depending on the trail you choose, and there are many, early spring flowers can be seen throughout the park. The blue-purple blue witch is common in the chaparral. Look there too for Fremont’s star lily growing among the grasses and under chaparral shrubs. The deep shade cast by oaks and other riparian trees give refuge to the shade loving California saxifrage, purple pagoda, small flower woodland star and fiesta flower. All of them like to hang out in shady areas with the sunlight filtering through tree canopies. Find them now along the Bench Trail or occupying meadows like those along the Rim Trail. Also preferring grassy, open areas but in sunnier locations, are baby blue eyes and cream cups It’s impossible to choose the “cutest” flower in California but cream cups, seen along the North Wilderness Trail, would be a contender. Each creamy petal grades to a buttery yellow at the center where you find a pom-pom of filaments and stamens. That’s it for this week. Visit the Wildflower Hotline website to see photos of these and more wildflower sites. The Theodore Payne Foundation’s. annual Native Plant Garden Tour is April 5 & 6. Tickets are now on sale. Check the TPF website theodorepayne.org for details. The next report will be available on Friday, April 11.

Welcome to the Theodore Payne Foundation’s 42nd year of the Wildflower Hotline. The Hotline offers weekly on-line and recorded updates on the best locations for viewing spring wildflowers in Southern and Central California. All locations are on easily accessible public lands and range from urban to wild, distant to right here in L.A.Millions of years ago, a series of volcanic eruptions shaped the landscape that is now Pinnacles National Park. The remnants of these ancient eruptions have formed a striking terrain of rocky spires and deep canyons. Visitors can explore diverse environments, from chaparral and oak woodlands to the cool, shaded depths of canyon floors. From short, easy trails for the whole family to strenuous hikes for the serious adventurer, Pinnacles has it all! In the woodlands along the riparian corridors, goldfields can be found in grassy open areas, especially now along the Bench Trail. Milkmaids and shooting stars are occupying meadows like those along the Rim Trail. The magenta-colored warrior’s plume, a root parasite poaching nutrients from the roots of other plants, is abundant in the shade beneath oaks and shrubs. Check them out if you are walking the High Peaks Loop.Wildflowers are usually in early bloom at the Theodore Payne Foundation, but without the winter rainfall occurring in SoCal this year, visitors will have to wait to find out what wildflower species may germinate and grow after March’s recent rain. Colorful native perennials, however, always benefit from rain no matter what time of year. The hot pink of hummingbird sage, red Baja fairy duster and Nevin’s barberry growing in the demonstration garden, are attracting a different kind of visitor—hungry hummingbirds! Chilicothe and Baja spurge are show-stoppers in the Demonstration Garden this week too. Along the sales yard pathways, visitors are tempted to take a closer look and photograph the deep pink Western redbud trees and the blue-eyed grass making a showy ground cover under them. Trekking up Wildflower Hill adjacent to the sales yard, you will encounter fragrant Cedros Island verbena—a lovey lavender flowered perennial which can also be purchased at the TPF nursery!The Iron Mountain Trail near Poway is a popular hiking route for San Diego area trekkers. On this fabulous trail, you will see hundreds of plants of the warrior’s plume which is scattered along the trailhead. Sunny slopes are covered as far as the eye can see with flowering Eastwood manzanita and mission manzanita. There are bush poppies with their large yellow flowers standing out like beacon lights among their grey foliage. Woolly leaf ceanothus is covered with buds and soon there will be hundreds of these blue-flowering shrubs in bloom. Snow drop bush is just leafing out, so it will be a month or so before it pops with lovely white blossoms! That’s it for this week. Visit the Wildflower Hotline website to see photos of these and more wildflower sites. The Theodore Payne Foundation’s. annual Native Plant Garden Tour is April 5 & 6. Tickets are now on sale. Check the TPF website theodorepayne.org for details. The next report will be available on Friday, March 28th.

Welcome to the Theodore Payne Foundation’s 42nd year of the Wildflower Hotline. The Hotline offers weekly on-line and recorded updates on the best locations for viewing spring wildflowers in Southern and Central California. All locations are on easily accessible public lands and range from urban to wild, distant to right here in L.A.Along the Mariposa Trail in the Irish Hills Natural Reserve in San Luis Obispo County, wildflowers are beginning to exhibit an early bloom. Colorful specie s should add to the display over the next few weeks if predicted storms release more life-giving rainfall. Look for the earliest of California’s wildflowers, red maids, milkmaids, blue dicks, chocolate lilies, hummingbird sage, shooting stars, buttercups, and California golden violets. Not a flowering plant, but the abundant gold back fern provides a lush green background for the nearby flowering beauties.Travel across the valley into the Southern Sierra foothills. This region was fortunate to have good mid-winter rainfall and wildflowers should be nice throughout the spring. The redbuds are now flowering and dot the near and distant vista with their fuchsia-pink blossoms. Eastman’s fiddleneck and popcorn flowers are seen stippling the hillsides with yellow and white flecks of color. Catch sight too, the silver bush lupines with their blue floral spikes poking above silvery foliage. Here and there on north facing hillsides, shooting stars are in early bloom.Also, in that area along a short 10-mile stretch of Hwy 223 between Arvin and Hwy 58, some wildflowers were observed growing in the pastoral landscapes that dominate this section of the highway. While not in abundance, there are nice displays of annual lupine, fiddlenecks and popcorn flower. Please be cautious and pull off the road if you want to inspect flowers more closely.At the California Botanic Garden in Claremont, springtime buds and blooms are awakening from their winter dormancy. Plants along the maze of picturesque trails include coral-colored desert globemallow, various ceanothus, California redbud, California buttercups, sticky monkeyflower in a variety of warm colors. Your senses will be overwhelmed by fragrant and colorful sages as well. Several different species of perennials belonging to the sunflower family are brightening up the garden with their ubiquitous golden yellow flowers.That’s it for this week. Visit the Wildflower Hotline website to see photos of these and more wildflower sites. The Theodore Payne Foundation’s. annual Native Plant Garden Tour is April 5 & 6. Tickets are now on sale. Check the TPF website theodorepayne.org for details. The next report will be available on Friday, March 14th.

Hear weekly recorded wildflower reports, narrated by Tom Henschel. New reports are released every Friday, March through May.The acclaimed Theodore Payne Wild Flower Hotline, founded in 1983, offers free weekly online and recorded updates – posted each Friday from March through May – on the best locations for viewing spring wildflowers in Southern and Central California. All locations are on easily accessible public lands and range from urban to wild, distant to right here in Los Angeles.