Carrizo Plain’s Super Bloom

I am enormously blessed to live in an amazing County with Oceans, mountains, and amazing plains like Carrizo. Every year I go spend a day watching the Super bloom, and this year was extra beautiful. Enjoy the blooms from your computer if you can not make it yourself.

The Carrizo Plain, “Place of the rabbits” is a large, enclosed grassland plain, approximately 50 miles long and up to 15 miles across, in southeastern San Luis Obispo County, California, about 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles. It contains the 246,812-acre Carrizo Plain National Monument, names by President Bill Clinton in 2001and it is the largest single native grassland remaining in California.

The Super Bloom usually begins in March or Early April and by mid-June most blooms have wilted. Enjoys some photos of the Carrizo Plain and a closer view of the flowers that bloom here.

It is a short drive from towns and resources, so take a picnic and water. Bring walking shoes and of course your camera.

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Hillside Daisies

One of the brightest and most ubiquitous flowers you will see is Common Monolopia, or Common Hillside Daisy (Monolopia lanceolata),   A member of the aster or sunflower family, Asteraceae, Hillside Daisy is widespread throughout Carrizo Plain as well as the Temblor and Caliente ranges. 

Valley Phacillia

The Great Valley Phacelia (Phacelia ciliata), It grows in grassland and low mountain slopes. It is an annual herb growing erect to a maximum height near half a meter. The branching or unbranched stem is hairy and lightly hairy. The oblong or oval leaves are up to 15 centimeters long, the larger ones divided into lobed or toothed leaflets.

Owl’s Clover

Purple Owl’s Clover (Castilleja exserta), which is not a clover at all (clovers are nitrogen-fixing legumes) but rather a hemi-parasitic member of the broomrape family, Orobanchaceae.  Rather than supplying valuable nitrogen to the plant community through nitrogen fixation like lupines, owl’s clovers are partial parasites, deriving some of their nutrients directly from neighboring plants through a network of tiny filaments called hyphae.  The leaves of owl’s clovers are very small, since their need to photosynthesize is reduced. 

Lemon’s Mustard

If you’ve ever traveled to California’s wine country in early spring, you may have seen the vineyards awash in yellow flowers. Those are mustard plants, the winemaker’s friend. Many vineyard owners plant mustard deliberately as a cover crop or let field mustard (Brassica kaber) run rampant. When plowed back into the soil, the plants act as a green manure and release nitrogen. Mustard also repels some insects (the seeds are that hot) and attracts syrphid flies, beneficial predators that attack vine-chewing insects.

Fiddle Neck

Another extremely prevalent wildflower at Carrizo Plain is Fiddle Neck (Amsinckia intermedia), in the borage or forget-me-not family, Boraginaceae.  Whole fields have turned orange with their little curled heads of blooms. 

Baby Blue Eyes

Baby Blue Eyes – nemophila menziesii is another flower that fills the field with delight every visit. Surprisingly it is also a member of the borage family (Boraginaceae)

Blue Dicks

Another plant that grows from a bulb and bears clusters of flowers is Blue Dicks (Dichelostemma capitatum).  Blue Dicks can be found across California, from the mountains, to the desert, to the coast, so it’s no surprise that it should also be at home in grasslands.  This plant is a member of the family Themidaceae, which has been separated from Liliaceae (the Lily family), along with brodiaeas and triteleias.

Bush Lupine

The lupines are another widespread group of plants, found growing from the Sierra Nevada mountains and foothills, across the valleys of the state, up and down the coast and throughout our deserts. Lupine species carpet the Giant Sequoia groves, thriving on gravelly desert slopes, and battered by salt spray along the Pacific coast.  Really, there seems to be a lupine for every plant community, and the grasslands are certainly not without their own lupine representatives.   Six species of lupines can be found in Carrizo Plain, but, this phot is of the Bush Lupine (Lupinus albifrons), since it’s the largest and most obvious. 

Purple Wild Onion

Tiddy Tips

Tidy Tips, lovely yellow composite flowers with white-tipped petals, are also blooming in profusion around Soda Lake.  In addition to the common Coastal Tidy Tips (Layia platyglossa), the more rare but similar-looking Munz’s Tidy Tips (Layia munzii) can be found at Carrizo Plain

Parry’s Larkspur

Parry’s Larkspur (Delphinium parryi) is commonly associated with desert and grassland plant communities and is nearly endemic to California, with just a few occurrences outside the state.

Here are some more aerial and ground photos.

The State has done a great job of marking boundaries and allowing for visitors.

Soil taxonomy

The Soil Plays a massive part in why the super bloom occurs.

The parent materials for soils in the Carrizo Plain are predominantly alluvium deposits. Alluvium is soil that has been deposited by rivers or flowing water. The Paso Robles formation is a Pleistocene aged alluvium deposit that reaches up to 3,000 ft thick near the San Andreas fault and thins out towards the north and west. The Paso Robles formation is a well known aquifer that has been reliably productive for ground wells throughout the area. The upper layers of soil are more recent alluvium. This recent layer is thickest near Soda Lake and thins out towards the mountains to the east and west.

Throughout the valley the soil composition varies greatly and includes clay loams, silty clay loams, loams, sandy loams, and gravelly loams. The sandier soils tend to reside near the slopes of the valley and provide greater drainage while the soils with more clay are located on the valley floor near Soda Lake, and have much poorer drainage. The soils in the Carrizo Plain have very low fertility because of their high alkalinity content and low rainfall due to the semi-arid climate.

#carrizoplains #superbloom