|
If you're like me, you can't wait for spring and the wildflower displays it brings. Here in the central Sierra foothills, we are having a relatively late spring. Except for one week of warm weather in early February, the prevailing weather patterns have been producing cold, wet storms spaced about a week apart since January. That one week of warm weather fooled a few wildflowers into blooming, only to be snowed on when temperatures suddenly dropped 20 degrees in the second week of February.
A trip to the Red Hills on March 4th revealed only about a dozen species of wildflowers in bloom. Among them were common lomatium (Lomatium utriculatum), red maids (Calandrinia ciliata), buck brush (Ceanothus cuneatus), goldfields (Lasthenia californica), common stickyseed (Blennosperma nanum), blue dicks (Dichelostemma capitatum), cream cups (Platystemon californicus), lace pod (Thysanocarpus curvipes), sandwort (Minuartia californica), butter and eggs (Orthocarpus erianthus), and miner's lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata).
A short trip down the hill to Knight's Ferry was rewarded with blooming bush lupine (above) and cows udder clover. What wildflowers were blooming on March 4th were covered by record snow fall a week later on March 11th. Last year on the same date it was 85 degrees!
There is a silver lining to this cloud of late wintery weather - for the second year in a row we should have an extended wildflower season (just as soon as it arrives). |
