Natural History Wanderings

Where to photograph in California – Yahoo Groups (Calphoto) has new reports for North Table Mountain, Figueroa Mountain,New Cuyama, Figueroa Mountain, Wind Wolves Preserve and Carrizo.

North Table Mountain. Fantastic flower displays! The main thing is to hike out away from the parking lot area, where the display isn’t as good as sometimes (but still not bad). On a Wednesday, the parking lot still filled up, but there weren’t huge crowds.
Lots of good flowers if you are interested in individual flower shots.
For landscape photographers, the poppies and lupines weren’t as showy as some years. But I’m not sure that they will get much better. Lots of meadowfoam in the low spots. Large vistas of goldfields. More popcorn flower and bird’s eye gilia than I’ve seen in recent years, and these make some amazing swaths of color on the hillsides.
Lots of water in the waterfalls and streams, but it wasn’t too hard to get around the hillsides. I’ve been there in much wetter times.
 I don’t have a complete list of plants, as I have many pictures to process, but I found Bitterroot, sky lupine, plantago, lots of Blue Dicks, white hyacinth, purple owl’s clover, frying pan and foothill poppies, pretty face, meadow foam, goldfields, yellow carpet, yellow violets, at least three different species of popcorn flower, huge seep monkey flowers, a purple monkey flower, buttercups, white tipped clover, cowbag clover, stonecrop, butter ‘n eggs, bird’s eye gilia, lacepod, valley tassels, larkspur, two kinds of woodland star, red maids, miner’s lettuce.

Figueroa Mountain – Conditions were okay.  Poppies near the summit.  Lots of lupines, bush and grape soda.  It looks like a lot of the bush lupines are just starting. It was pretty windy and the hiking I did was not too productive.  I really wanted to find those chocolate lilies (no luck though)!    https://flic.kr/p/S6vB5z

New Cuyama area – Lots of Hillside Daisies. Conditions are not as good as 2010, but they are still amazing. https://flic.kr/p/T6EW9Q

Wind Wolves Preserve – Not really much for Wildflowers.  I hiked about 3 miles into the canyon and saw a lot of phacelia past peak and sporadic lupine and just a couple of poppies.  The grasses were very tall and, with the wind, really showed why they call it Wind Wolves!

Carrizo – Conditions at Carrizo are better than what Theodore Payne newsletter reports.  The Temblor range is covered in many areas by Monolopia and some areas have Phacelia and Poppies.

https://flic.kr/p/TaKpe8  I did some adventuring on the 4WD trails off of Elkhorn Rd and hiked a couple miles up into the hills and found a nice mix of poppies, phacelia, monolopia and dessert candles.  https://flic.kr/p/T8nNtG   In fact, there were whole hillsides of desert candles. Simply amazing!

The plains are pretty normal, with large swaths of flowers (goldfields, tidy tips,  monolopia, coreopsis, phacelia and maybe some Larkspur, still researching that) east of Soda Lake on Summer / San Diego Creek Rd.  The fields around the road to Selby campground appear to be at peak and a great place for sunset photos. https://flic.kr/p/SNr9Xd .  The field of phacelia at the southern end of the plain is incredible.  I call it a purple lake.  The road to the area stops about a half mile and you have to hike the rest of the way in.  Photos cannot do it justice.

One other location to mention is the Taft side of the Temblors.  There is not as much color as the Carrizo side, but it is still nice and the 4WD roads are get you closer to the action.  I travelled to Carrizo from Taft using the Crocker Springs / Hurricane Rd.  It’s a dirt road and not too bad.  It looks like the poppies are ready to explode on the hills in the area.  I saw some small patches, but it looked like there would be a lot more (of course, it could be fiddleneck in disguise, but I thought it looked like poppies ready to bloom).