![feral flowers feral flowers](https://theploughartscentre.org.uk/files/events/3342/johninsullimg7785print01a3sm.jpg)
Besides rain, wildflower experts have little information about what sparks a certain plant to grow from seed and dominate a field. “I get kinda bummed out in drought years, and I’m hoping all summer long we get rains in winter,” he says. Botanists know that heavy winter rains encourage blossoms, and Neumer takes those storms personally. That vague pattern is about all Fuentes can expect every year.
![feral flowers feral flowers](https://www.freeimageslive.co.uk/files/images010/flor-8.jpg)
A super bloom of poppies and other wildflowers at Lake Elsinore, California. As temperatures rise, flowers in the lower regions fade while those in more elevated sites, like Devil’s Punchbowl and the high desert in Joshua Tree National Park, open up, giving staff and volunteers something to report. “Because they bloom only just a couple weeks out of the year, I refresh myself every season,” she says. She’s new to the job, and there are hundreds of species to get to know.
#Feral flowers verification
Her weekly inspections of the county’s 14 wildlife sanctuaries and her home park, Devil’s Punchbowl, sometimes requires plant verification with apps like iNaturalist or Calflora. Neumer’s coworker, Oliva Miseroy, has taken over the task this spring. “Spring arrives almost in the middle of winter down there,” says Dave Neumer, who reported to the hotline from L.A. Staff from Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, for example, might have some of the first news, though the area sometimes blossoms into plants like sand verbenas or desert sunflowers before the hotline even begins. In this state, says Fuentes, lower elevations experience warmer, bloom-inducing temperatures first. The earliest reports trickle in from California’s valleys.
![feral flowers feral flowers](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VMC55VOv6sY/T6ZEV9fBu1I/AAAAAAAADFk/UKpjTwlS9r8/s1600/Wild+Flowers+4A.jpg)
An Arizona lupine ( Lupinus arizonicus) reaches for the sky.
![feral flowers feral flowers](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/57/e7/dd/57e7dd6e1e4c4f471ce30f20c9fb5441.jpg)
Her reports could still hold value in years to come as biologists continue to figure out what natural forces govern native blooms.
#Feral flowers Patch
She spends every spring collecting weekly reports on blooming activity from national parks, state preserves, public gardens and botanists friends who recognize a travel-worthy patch of wildflowers when they see one. Thankfully, Lorrae Fuentes, who compiles information from around the state to write the updates, is calm about the whole process. Every year, a new array of blossoms appears at different times, in patterns botanists have yet to figure out. The soothing recording belies how unpredictable California wildflowers are. Updated every Friday, the five-minute audio and written monologue helps wildflower seekers identify current hotspots, and this year’s super bloom has made the hotline extra popular. This is the Theodore Payne Foundation Wild Flower Hotline, which the native plant organization has been running for 36 years. It’s a recording that Spano volunteers to do at the request of a friend and 2,226 people had called this number by late April. “Milk maids, dozens of them, line the trail beckoning you onward,” he said of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in March. If you call 81, extension 7 in March, April or May, you can hear actor Joe Spano rhapsodize about the wildflowers blooming in California that week.