Super Bloom at Edgewood Preserves!

Tidy tips, Owl's clover, and a single Poppy at Edgewood

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit Anza Borrego, the state's largest preserve - and it was nine hour by car. Edgewood Preserves is only a half hour by car and quite small. But this time of year, it's equally amazing.

You can see the fields of gold - Tidy tips and the aptly named Goldfields - even from the the freeway. As you get closer, you see the fields of wildflowers, such as the Tidy tips and Owl's clover above.

Goldfields and Tidy Tips from a Distance
 The wildflowers do so well here because the serpentine soil makes it difficult for the European grasses to grow. Other preserves and parks also have some wildflowers this time ago, but they're all struggling because the late rain favored the grasses.

Silver bush lupine. I think.

Even the first piece of our walk led us past lupines, tidy tips, and the tallest monkey flower bush I've ever seen. And beautiful Larkspur, the deepest blue, was right in the middle of the tidy tip field.

Tidy tips and Larkspur
This time, I couldn't get a close-up, so here's one from 2010.

Larkspur at Edgewood
As we walked on, there were more things to discover. We saw a bunny and lots of deer. We enjoyed the fragrance of the sagebrush. And then there were the flowers.


I was especially excited to encounter some Cream cups (Platystemon californicus). I just bought a few for my own garden from Annie's Annuals and was excited to see them in the wild.

Cream cups
It's a small park, so we pretty much walked each of the trails and were still done after two hours. But it was so much fun to gaze at the flowers, snap a few pictures, and enjoy the morning sun.


On the last trail, we even came across some Mule's ear, a California native sunflower-like plant that's almost impossible to grow in the garden.

Mule's ear
I was so happy that we'd gone - wildflower season is almost over! But maybe we have another week or two... Happy spring!


Comments

Country Mouse said…
Lovely to see your photos of Edgewood -- around then I was hiking at Coyote Ridge (another serpentine soil area maybe 20 miles or so south of Edgewood), and so many of the same flowers and a few different ones - I'll have to do a "bookend" post with some photos!