Wildflowers in California

A few days ago, I traveled up to the Russian River Wine Road with my wife and a few friends to take advantage of barrel tasting. We are in the midst of a beautiful spring here in California with everything blooming and showing color. Unfortunately, this also means lots of pollen in the air for those allergy sufferers…


As you can see from the above picture, the hills in wine country this time of year are full of yellow color. Not from the grape vines, they are all still dormant, but from the wild Mustard. The yellow hills made for a nice scenic trip. The challenge was remember how to press the shutter button after all the wine tasting!

If you’re in certain parts of the Western US, there are great opportunities right now to catch the spring in full bloom (sorry for all those still longing for the great thaw!). Below are a number of sites with great information:

  • Carol Leigh’s California Wildflower Hotsheet: User submitted accounts of where the wild flowers are a poppin’.
  • DesertUSA’s WildFlower Report 2008: This year is a stellar year for the desert wildflowers across the Southwest. Wonder reports and pictures of how things are progressing.
  • Death Valley National Park’s Wildflower report: A less accurate (as it is update weekly) report of the wildflowers in Death Valley. Scroll down to Wildflower Update. Visit the other SW desert national parks websites as well for information about their wildflowers…
  • In Search of Wildflowers: a new blog focused on the wildflowers…

The great thing about living in California is that it’s March and we can go out and take pictures of Wildflowers and with the Sierra’s as our back yard our wild flower season will extend into July!

SideBlur: A photographer I meet last year mentioned to me a spot for flowers somewhere south of San Jose. there is a some road that is supposed to connectd Highway 101 and Highway 1 by going up and through the hills between the two. Along that road is either a park with wild flowers or a place where they grow flowers outside. If anyone knows where this place is, please leave a comment about it. I haven’t been able to find it…

3/19 Update: Catching up on some blog reading tonight and I came across a great post at Active Sole with links to all the major Desert areas experiencing wildflower explosion this year. Great post Jeff!

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