A seven-month journey through color and wonder
Even after 30 years in California, the weather still throws me. Back in New England the first flush of green means spring; here it signals the start of winter. In New England we endure five months of monotone beige and white, a month of mud and then the rhododendrons bloom for 10 days before heat and humidity send us scurrying for shade or air conditioning. In California it feels like the technicolor exuberance of spring wildflowers lasts for seven months.
It starts as soon as the longest night ends. Somewhere, a tender shoot unfurls, reaches for the sun, and soon there’s a carpet of yellow, orange or purple flowers carpeting the ocean cliff. Or the arroyo, grasslands, alpine meadow, or parking median. Thanks to California’s mind-bending diversity of altitude, aspect and ecosystem, spring blooms start in late January and can continue into September.
Of course there are no guarantees in nature. Super blooms may happen two years in a row, or not for a decade. Scant rainfall may leave a desert barren all spring; massive snowfall can bring color to an alpine meadow after the kids have gone back to school. Their ephemeral nature is part of what makes wildflowers so precious. Numerous online resources can help in your sleuthing for any given year or area. 
Here are five places that make me think of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay’s words in her poem Afternoon on the Hill — “I will be the gladdest thing / Under the sun! / I will touch a hundred flowers / And not pick one.”
Channel Islands National Park
We’re barely into the new year when the blooms begin to emerge in Channel Islands National Park. Located just 20 miles offshore of Santa Barbara, these five islands comprise one of the least visited national parks in the country, mostly because they’re so hard to get to: you need a private boat or a ferry ticket with Island Packers. They’ve never been part of the mainland, leading to loads of endemic species and the nickname “California’s Galápagos Islands”.
The islands explode with color and variety in late January and the show continues for about two months. Tiny Anacapa Island, closest to the mainland, hosts vivid yellow and red paintbrush found nowhere else in the world, along with unique giant coreopsis. San Miguel, Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz Islands have endemic red buckwheat, pink-red blooms on tall stalks.
Though plant nerds rejoice at identifying the unique island species, everybody can enjoy walking through fields of head-high purple lupines, or gazing at purple-tinged meadows. Splashes of yellow look like spilled paint from a distance. With so many unique ecological niches on each island, there’s a wealth of wildflower wonder awaiting.
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park
Ranging from sea level to over six thousand feet above it, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park includes valley floors, desert springs, lonesome canyons, dry lake beds and austere badlands. California’s largest state park is located in eastern San Diego County, about 100 miles from the southern border with Mexico. The bloom usually begins in mid-February and continues into mid-May.
With such a wide range of habitats, visitors can enjoy a wide range of flowers as well. Brilliant yellow desert dandelions and brittle brush, along with royal purple heliotrope blanket the canyons. In the badlands, pink, magenta, purple and white verbena add color to sandy hills, and pale creamy dune evening primrose adds a sweet scent to afternoons and evenings. Purple lupines and desert bluebells carpet the valley floor, while beavertail cactus, cholla and ocotillo bloom in the driest parts of the park.
Watching wildflowers transform the sepia-toned desert into a technicolor riot can restore your faith in the divine. As part of the Colorado desert, Anza-Borrego experiences milder winter temperatures than the neighboring Mojave desert, making for more pleasant viewing conditions. Public hot springs and a decent chance of watching the resident bighorn sheep herd make the campground a lovely base camp for flower forays.
Carrizo Plain National Monument
When John Muir walked across the Central Valley in the late 1800s, he described “… a lake of pure sunshine, forty or fifty miles wide, five hundred miles long, one rich furred garden of yellow Compositae.” Colonization and the ensuing water diversion schemes have replaced the wild tule marshes with orchards, fields and towns, but there are still a few places to revisit Muir’s lake of sunshine.
Carrizo Plain National Monument is the largest native grassland remaining in California, and though a small mountain range separates it from the Central Valley proper, it shares a very similar ecosystem. Soda Lake is one of the dominant features of the Carrizo Plain, but the vast open grasslands rimmed by mountains provide the perfect backdrop for the annual spectacular wildflower show. Not every year is a super bloom, but every year does provide an awe-inspiring display.
Goldfields and baby blue eyes are usually the first to emerge here, clustered around Soda Lake, sometime in late March or April. They’re followed by hillside and yellow daisies, lupine and California poppies, blanketing the grasslands in impressionistic swaths of yellow, purple and orange.
Lassen Volcanic National Park
In northeastern California you can see all four different kinds of volcanoes the world has to offer: shield, composite, cinder cone and plug dome volcanoes, of which 10,457-foot Lassen Peak is one. The combination of northern latitude — the park is about 150 miles south of the Oregon border — and high elevation means Lassen Peak has some of the latest opportunities to witness wildflower wonder in California.
In the mixed conifer zone of Warner Valley, at 5,600 feet, wildflowers start to appear in late May; on Lassen Peak in the alpine and subalpine zone they can last through September. A purple tinge from irises, violets and lupine sprea
ds through the lowlands early in the season. Rock spirea, paintbrush and penstemon are among the hardy wildflowers that grace the higher slopes with color when wildflowers have faded from the rest of the state.
Your Own Backyard
Of course, the best place to enjoy wildflowers is where you live. Though California offers a wealth of roadtrip worthy wildflower wonder, from the alpine slopes of plug dome volcanoes to the sparse deserts of its southernmost reaches, there are very likely wildflowers blooming within a 10-minute walk of your home.
Take some time to get to know the flora of your home turf, and deepen your appreciation for the multicolored majesty that springs forth from the ground every year. Learning about where you live helps you love it, and when we begin to feel a profound connection with land we want to protect it.
Take yourself on a daily spring walk around your own neighborhood and check out what’s blooming. Notice the miracle of flowering life in your own backyard. We don’t need to travel far to experience awe and gratitude, we just need to pay attention and open our hearts to the wonder all around us.
Read more articles by Leonie Sherman here
ED NOTE FOR 2025: Spring wildflowers are expected to be limited in Southern California due to below-average rainfall in the area. Get the details on what to expect, how the dry conditions are impacting some landscapes, and what this means for the season ahead. Read more here.
