Wildflower super blooms are taking over the Santa Monica Mountains in Ventura County. Patches of bright orange poppies and white lilies dot the hillsides along mountain roads. Blue dicks and purple lupines have popped up along some trails. And this is only the beginning.
Experts predict this year’s wildflower bloom to peak between now and mid-April. Why? Because of our above-average rain, this winter combined with the remnants of the Woosley Fire that ravaged the Santa Monica Mountains. That combination typically means hillsides painted in orange, red, blue and purple blooms, as the more regular crowd of wildflowers mixes with so-called fire followers. Visitors and locals are blown away by the brightly colored fire poppies to California bells, with seeds that can wait underground for decades until their cue to sprout.
“I would get out there now and start looking,” said Joey Algiers, a restoration ecologist with the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.
Where can you find wildflowers?
So far, in the Santa Monica Mountains, chocolate lilies have been spotted in Rancho Sierra Vista, poppies popped up in upper Cheeseboro and a stretch of grass turned yellow with goldfield flowers just inside the entrance at Paramount Ranch.
In Malibu Creek State Park, trail-goers can find a little bit of everything.
Rancho Sierra Vista and Point Mugu State Park stretch from neighborhoods of Newbury Park to the Pacific Coast Highway. Blooms already have popped up, especially on south-facing slopes.
Paramount Ranch in Agoura Hills is one of the most accessible spots to see a field of wildflowers. A blanket of goldfields covers the ground along the entrance road.
Cheeseboro and Palo Comado Canyon is no stranger to fire. In 2005, the park was burned in the Topanga Fire. In its wake, visitors say, the wildflowers were a sight to see. Now burned in the Woolsey Fire, the park in Agoura is again expected to be awash in color.
Malibu Creek State Park in Calabasas is expected to have a variety of blooms. “You’ll find something you like no matter which trail you go on,” National Park Service biologist Mark Mendelsohn said.
“This is like all the colors on the rainbow and the vibrant green included,” said National Park Service biologist Mark Mendelsohn of the wildflower display. “It’s a spectacle. It really is. It only happens a couple months out of the year and, to this extent, on really good years.”
You simply MUST see this once-in-a-lifetime spectacle. Why not make one of our beach vacation homes your wildflower viewing hub?