Natural History Wanderings

AOL and The Sacramento Bee  have an opinion piece on the state of California’s wildflowers

The large displays of wildflowers that we experience in California are extremely rare, globally. California is in one of the world’s 36 biodiversity hot spots and is home to more than 6,000 types of native plants, including hundreds of wildflower species. Only a few other places on Earth, like Chile’s Atacama desert and Western Australia, have such dramatic blooms.

A sad reality is that the super blooms that thrill Californians today are but a fraction of the wildflowers that used to blanket our state. Once, wildflowers spanned miles in places like the Central Valley. In just the last 150 years, most of these grassland habitats were lost to development, agriculture and invasive species.

Read full article at  California has the highest concentration of plants at risk of extinction in the nation | Opinion