Wild Flower Hotline March 28, 2025

Friday, March 28 2025

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 herbaceous perennials, woody shrubs, and trees have leafed-out and are blossoming well following the mid-March rain events. A few hardy annuals have started to appear like goldfields, fiddlenecks, popcorn flowers and some lupine species. It doesn’t seem promising for wild landscape super blooms. Our best wildflower shows in Southern California are at maintained gardens like Theodore Payne, California Botanic Garden, and home gardens like the ones you will see on Theodore Payne’s Garden Tour April 5 and 6.

In the Southern Sierra foothill region east of Visalia, redbud trees are still blossoming and dot the slopes with their fuchsia pink buds and flowers. Petite and whipsy stems of Eastman’s fiddlenecks, rusty popcorn flower, electric blue hound’s tongue blossoms, silver bush lupine and not one, but TWO species of baby blue eyes are in peak bloom. Wild hyacinths are poking up from the ground everywhere. Shooting stars, buck brush and tiny-but-mighty miner’s lettuce are fading slowly but Greene’s saxifrage is still standing strong and tall in the moist meadows. These delicate flowers paint a lovely picture of early spring in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

The usual riotous wildflower bloom at Placerita Canyon Nature Center has not appeared yet this year. However, the hills within and around the park are shrouded in places with shades of white and blue blossoms of two ceanothus species. The fragrance in the air is delightful.

Shades of blue and lavender dominate the color scheme this week at the California Botanic Garden, Check out the various lupines, native Douglas iris, fragrant sages. little purple houses, assorted phacelias and the many lovely ceanothus species .The flashes of red exploding on the scene and catching your attention are the firecracker penstemons. Low to the ground, the upturned faces of sunny yellow Southern sun cups can be found in many open areas of the garden. Other plants along the maze of picturesque trails include desert globemallows, California redbuds, California buttercups, wallflowers, sticky monkeyflowers, Baja roses and sugar bushes. Of course, you would expect, at the California Botanic Garden, you might find California poppies and indeed, they are everywhere!

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 4th.