Hi,

I'm still working on all the pictures I took during the week we toured
mostly the central part of California looking for flowers in April. We
knew we had missed the wonderful displays in the desert, but we went
to other areas where there were still some spectacular flowers and I
saw a lot of bulbs. It's going to take some time for me to get them
all on the wiki, but I made an attempt to add pictures taken along the
Hite's Cove Trail which climbs above the south fork of the Merced
River off Highway 140 before you get to Yosemite. We arrived late
afternoon and spent about three hours hiking the trail and looking at
the gorgeous flowers. There were masses of a small annual orange
California poppy, Eschscholzia caespitosa, a pretty blue and white
Lupine, Lupinus bicolor, and lots and lots of Owl's Clover, Castillja
exserta. We saw the latter almost every day on our trip. There were
many other wonderful flowers like Chinese houses (Collinsia
heterophylla), Fiesta Flower (Pholistoma auritum), Indian Paintbrush
(Castilleja applegatei), Indian Pink (Silene californica), Mustang
Clover (Linanthus montanus), and an orange Dudleya, Dudleya cymosa.
But these plants are off topic as our forum is about bulbs and there
were were three that were evident all along the trail. We also saw
some Calochortus venustus over the side of the cliff toward the river,
but none of us were brave enough to try to get close enough to
photograph it.

Dichelostemma volubile was climbing through trees, shrubs, poison oak,
all over annuals, and even twining around itself. The most bizarre was
seeing it on a rock ledge with the Dudleya. We wondered if it had help
getting there, but couldn't really tell. Somehow growing this one in a
container just doesn't do justice to how it is in the wild.
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…

Triteleia ixioides ssp. scabra we had seen it earlier in Kern County
growing in grass, a pale yellow form which I also added pictures of to
the wiki so people could see a common habitat. Along the Hite's Cove
Trail it was growing with Chinese Houses and in many other delightful
combinations and some of the plants had purple stripes on the flowers.
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…

Finally everywhere was Calochortus albus which is one of my favorite
Calochortus. I was having a lot of trouble getting my digital camera
to focus on the flowers and not something else so took a lot of
pictures I deleted. The ones I added were the best of the lot
including one that shows how lovely the Collinsia was.
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…

I hope you all enjoy seeing some of California's treasures in the
wild. I'll be adding more as I have time.

Mary Sue

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