Natural History Wanderings

Santa Monica Mts. National Recreation Area reports

Things are drying out. If you’ve been putting off a flower hike time is running out.

Zuma Canyon-Backbone Trail 5/18/17 The Backbone Trail section through upper Zuma Canyon is a garden right now, with over 80 species currently in bloom. In addition to the “usual suspects”, some of the less common plants to be seen include: Checker Bloom, Stinky Gila (Allophyllum glutinosum), some white-flowered Elegant Clarkia, Large-flowered Phacelia, California Mustard (Caulanthus lasiophylllus), Pine Mat (Gallium andrewsii), and Mountain Dandelion.

Topanga Canyon State Park-Nature Trail 5/17/17 This year’s wonderful flowers are starting to diminish in many places but the Nature Trail in Topanga Canyon State Park, especially the chaparral portion out on the edge of the hillside is still pretty wonderful. It isn’t that there are unusual flowers there, just that there are so many massed flowers. There are bush mallow and lots of bush sunflowers, yucca, wild rose, bush lupine, narrow leaf milkweed and California buckwheat, in great quantities. We saw alligator lizards and a California whip snake. The only downside is that there is a lot of yellow star thistle growing in and near the trail. The prickles easily penetrate most trouser fabric and I pity anyone wearing shorts.

See older reports and photos at What’s Blooming

Santa Monica Mt. Quick Links:
Wildflowers of the Santa Monica Mountains – Photos of 1000 SMM plants.
Archive – Previous “What’s Blooming” reports.
Outdoors – The Calendar of Events for the Santa Monica Mountains NRA.
SMM WildFlowers – The Park’s popular wildflower app for the iPhone.
New! SMM WildFlowers – The Park’s popular wildflower app for Android smartphones (Pre-Release Beta Version)