On Wednesday I went with Colleen Wheeler, RSABG grounds staff, to collect wildflowers for the annual Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden Wildflower Show. Equipped with collecting permits, ziplock bags, coolers, ice and clippers, we made our way to Gorman and beyond. The best displays were seen early in the day on Bear Mountain Blvd, east of Arvin.
We continued on SR 223 to Hwy 58 and Hart Flat Road but didn’t see many flowers there, though the landscape was incredibly bucolic. We drove further east through the quirky town of Tehachapi, seeing many wonders including an enormous quarry and some great neon signs. Still didn’t see many flowers and those we did notice were along fast, narrow roads with no shoulder for stopping. We then headed back to the west on 58 and south to Maricopa Highway and the Wind Wolves Preserve. Alas the wildflowers were mostly gone, though the weedy grasses were making a good show. Returning to Los Angeles we stopped at the Hungry Valley SVRA. Last year I saw some amazing wildflowers there but it was not to be. The area is only open on Friday through Monday. Still the hills near Arvin were truly breathtaking. The pictures do not it justice! So go and see for yourself. Remember it is illegal to pick or collect wildflowers, and do respect private property.
And finally, check out the Wildflower Show at Rancho this weekend. Garden staff and graduate students search the hills and dales of southern California to bring together an amazing collection of flowers. The flowers are labeled and displayed in vases in a room that is chilled to help keep them fresh through the weekend.
Looks like wonderful displays, good on you for helping. Our local wildflower show, put on by Santa Clara CNPS I think, is happening April 25-6. I hope I can get out to see our wildflowers this year – should be a good year with all this rain we've been getting.
That looks great! I sure hope Country Mouse will be done with her deadline when the wildflowers start here, I'm itching to go. For now, though, it's still garden cleanup time…
I would love to have a field of blue lupines near my home and could not think of anything any prettier . Unfortunately they are not native to Ohio. Wonderful slide show.
I'm sure both CM and TM will have a great time seeing the wildflowers – deadline? – forget it. (That's me talking the way I wish I was, not the way I actually am.) Seriously, I do hope you get to go out together. <br /><br />HHG, lupines are wonderful but I am sure Ohio's native flora is beautiful in its own way – wild trilium for example. By the way, there is a lupine native to Ohio,
Somewhere among my many links I'd lost the one to this blog. So happy to have found it again and have put it on my blog list. I'm looking into native plants and you present so many different varieties. I look forward to visiting the Santa Anna gardens soon.<br /><br />I just got done visiting the poppies outside Lancaster. My first time. Wow.
A flower show with natives…gosh what a good way to get people interested in these plants! My local native plant chapter is great on advocacy and education in other ways but I don't think they've ever done this. I should suggest this to them.