Welcome to the Theodore Payne Foundation’s 44th annual Wild Flower 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.
Since November, the weather has been yo-yoing between cool and wet to hot and dry; and leaving us wondering how California wildflowers will respond to the fickleness of it all.
Spring at Anza-Borrego Desert State Park came and went in January. With recent temperature stretches in the high 90s, lower elevation blooms — including popular wildflower viewing sites Henderson Canyon Road and Coyote Canyon — are now past prime and fading quickly. Higher elevations around 2000+ feet, canyons, and riparian areas offer the best remaining flowers in early March, as these areas hold moisture longer. Brittlebush continues to brighten slopes, fishhook cactus is blooming now, and other cactus species’ blooms are expected later this month. 
It’s not a superbloom, but there is a good diversity of wildflowers to be seen in  Death Valley National Park . Some good viewing locations include Highway 178 west of Highway 127, the intersection of Jubilee Pass Road and Badwater Road, and Highway 190 north of Furnace Creek. Wildflowers commonly found along the highway on open, alluvial slopes include desert sunflowers, phacelias, and gravel ghosts, sometimes called parachute plants. A gravel ghost plant has a cluster of broad, grey leaves colored with brown blotches. The leaves lie flat to the earth. A thin, dark stem arises from the well-camouflaged leaf cluster and is quite inconspicuous against the background of the dusky soil. The canopy of white flowers at the top of this central stem converges their threadlike stalks appearing like a parachute floating in midair; or if a breeze is blowing, look ghost-like. Low-to-the-ground belly flowers that prefer sandier habitat include desert stars, purple mats, and yellow tack stems. Follow the rules of the Park regarding driving and parking and please don’t harm the flowers.

Spring in the southern Sierra Nevada oak woodland and chaparral communities is at peak for early blooming flowers. Near Three Rivers, in the Case Mountain Recreation Area are lush green fields of yellow-orange fiddlenecks dancing with white popcorn flowers, dainty fringe-pods and a scattering of red maids. Uncommon, and exciting, is the presence in great numbers of Coulter’s jewel flower. But the “best of show” award goes to the foothill poppies covering the undulating landscape with their exuberant orange and yellow glow.
Traveling across the Great Valley to the Carrizo Plain, visitors first see the slopes of the Temblor Range awash with bright yellow hillside daisies accompanied by goldfields and fiddlenecks. Soda Lake is full of water, a rare sight in any year. The wildflower displays in the Caliente Range, west of Soda Lake, is being enhanced by the lack of old grass thatch, which was burned off in the Madre Fire last July. Hillside daisies, goldfields, and fiddlenecks dominate, but they are joined by many other species, including blazing star, California poppies, Great Valley phacelia, owl’s clover, Booth’s sun cup, lupines, and the strikingly bold and beautiful desert candle. 
At the Theodore Payne Foundation, native plants are starting to show their “spring bling.” Around the La Fetra Nature Education Center, a colorful duo, neon blue and hot pink showy penstemon and yellow desert marigold vie for your attention. Visitors are drawn into the nursery by the sight of cheery yellow bush sunflowers and red-orange Baja fairy duster. On the short hike up Wildflower Hill adjacent to the sales yard, visitors are ushered along the path by a group of lavender, purple and blue bloomers— lacy phacelias, deep blue-purple canterbury bells, and fragrant woolly blue curls. 
A delightful surprise awaits at Quinn Flat in Garner Valley in the San Jacinto Mountains. Along this scenic, high-elevation drive, there is a lovely flush of colorful wildflowers popping up from the former burn site. There are riotous patches of baby blue eyes, deep pink Johnston’s rockcress, masses of goldfields, scatterings of mountain red roots, some coastal gilia, popcorn flowers and a few other species; all in bloom at 4500 feet with snow still on the ground in some areas.

That’s it for this week’s report. Visit theodore payne dot org for the full report with photos of these and more wildflower sites identified this week. 
The Theodore Payne Foundation’s Native Plant Garden Tour will be April 11 & 12. Order your tickets today at native plant garden tour dot org.
The next wild flower report will be available on Friday, March 13th.