Clinton Keith Road & Salida Del Sol, Wildomar, Riverside County, CA, 3/17/2017
Here’s a delightful meadow of native wildflowers I discovered one morning in March of 2017. Winter brought abundant rainfall to the West after a prolonged drought, and the flower blossoms responded accordingly. This area of Riverside County in Southern California was remote countryside until recently; now this large plot of land lies amidst several new neighborhoods, and I fear its undeveloped days are numbered. The orange flowers are California poppies (Eschscholzia californica) with some Mexican gold poppies (Eschscholzia californica ssp. mexicana). The tiny white blossoms are chaparral gilia (Gilia angelensis). The unnamed hill to the north reaches 1,592 feet above sea level.