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Deep pink warrior’s plume, red Toyon berries and white coast silktassels are among the many flowers and berries that bloom on the Peninsula each winter.
Though kaleidoscopic displays of wildflowers are a more common sight in spring, California’s rare Mediterranean climate — one of only five in the world — lends itself to colorful blooms other times of the year. The state is home to about 6,000 plant species owing to its varied environments, including its coastline, deserts, mountains and grasslands.
“One of the reasons that we’re able to sort of highlight these winter bloomers is because of that biodiversity, because we have so many different climates and so many endemic species,” said Ryan McCauley, a spokesperson for Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District.
This time of year, madrones and toyons show off their bright red berry clusters. Other native plants, such as the britteleaf manzanita, display bell-shaped white flowers clumped together on long branches, and the chaparral currant dazzles in shades of pink.
Large wildflower blooms typically appear throughout spring and early summer following wet winters. In 2023, after atmospheric rivers battered the state, satellite images showed hillsides in central and Southern California flushed with swaths of orange and purple.
But the state’s native plants have evolved to withstand periods with little to no rainfall whatsoever.
“Historically, California was in a drought about a third of the time,” said Ann-Marie Benz, a horticulture expert with the California Native Plant Society. “(Native plants) co-evolved with the precipitation patterns, they’ve co-evolved with the microbes in the soil. And so they’re going to tolerate it and do better than something from outside the area.”
So far, this January has been relatively dry, allowing the native blooms to open up, but heavy rainfall is forecast for the first couple of days in February. And while native plants have an edge over invasive species during dry periods, McCauley said that winter precipitation stimulates the growth of invasive grasses.
“The grass can grow so quickly,” McCauley said. “It sort of just takes up all that sunlight and real estate, and the native plants underneath, they’re not able to sort of adapt as quickly.”
McCauley added that MROSD mows grassy hillsides to “give our native wildflowers a jump or sort of an advantage that they lose.”
Dana Page, the natural resource management program manager with the Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation Department, said cattle are also deployed to graze on invasive grasses year-round.
“They’re basically acting as these large lawn mowers that are out there and eating the grass, and allowing to keep that grass controlled,” Page said. “And then the native flowers can come up because that grass gets eaten by the cows.”
The Bay Area’s unique serpentine soil, a nutrient-poor rock, also adds another factor to the mix. Some native wildflowers, like the California poppy and California buttercup, have adapted to the soil and begin blooming in it in the winter, while invasive weeds and grasses struggle to take root.
There are also invasive flowers vying for a spot in the sunlight, including mustard and Bermuda buttercups, which also began to spring up in January.
And with climate change causing prolonged droughts some years and heavy downpours during others, experts say it’s difficult to know what’s going to happen to winter blooms and between native and invasive species in the long run.
“It’s an ever-evolving sort of study that we’re trying to understand: How do wildflowers and native plants — how are they shifting to sort of adapt to this changing environment,” McCauley said. ”I will say that because California is already this biodiversity hot spot and we have so many different microclimates — that in itself is sort of a strength and an advantage that could help sort of combat some of these shifts.”
Page said she thinks that development and habitat fragmentation is currently having a greater impact on native species than climate change, and that land trusts play a key role in conserving unique habitats.
Visitors can also have a positive impact on winter blooms.
“The other biggest thing is just letting people know if they’re going out on those hikes or going out to a park, to respect the habitat,” McCauley said, adding that flowers should not be picked or stepped on.
How to find local winter blooms
Looking for wildflowers and berries in the winter can feel like a bit of a treasure hunt. The California Native Plant Society’s project Calscape.org allows anyone to look up native plants by types, season and flower colors, among other criteria.
Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation Department also has an interactive map that outlines some of the best hikes to see wildflowers.
And through the application iNaturalist, people can post and search for plant sightings. Species’ location details are accessible with or without an account.
Recent logged observations include:
-California gooseberry at Edgewood Park & Natural Preserve in Redwood City
-Warrior’s plume at Thornewood Open Space Preserve in Woodside
-Summer snowflake in Foothills Park in Palo Alto
-Coast silktassel at Skyline Ridge Open Space Preserve in La Honda
-Chaparral currant at Monte Bello Open Space Preserve in Los Altos
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I was delighted to see an article on early blooming wildflowers but the first photo, labeled daffodils, is paper narcissus, a non-native species that was planted by a horticulturalist who once lived on what is now Edgewood Natural Preserve. Further down is a photo of Bermuda buttercup (the name tells you it’s a non-native) that is highly invasive and devilishly hard to eliminate. At Edgewood, teams of volunteers, working off trail with permits, have worked 2 days/wk. for over 30 yr. eliminating invasive exotics so that when you visit Edgewood (where I delighted in being a docent leading wildflower walks for 24 yr.) you can see what CA looked like before European colonizers came w/ their livestock and introduced non-native grasses and the flowering plants for which they provided habitat. Edgewood can be thought of a living museum in that respect, so seeing photos of non-natives before I eventually saw photos of native wildflowers caused me to say “oh no!”. And serpentine, which is mentioned, is rarely exposed on the surface of the earth (about 1% of it). There is quite a bit of it exposed at Edgewood and the soil it creates, plus the soil created by erosion of several other kinds of minerals, leads to the astounding variety of wildflowers one can see there, many many times more than anywhere else on the SF Peninsula. Interested visitors can sign up on line for docent led wildflower hikes starting in about mid-March. There is much that can be learned that is fascinating and will greatly enhance appreciation of the landscapes there and elsewhere on the peninsula and the relationship between things like soil type and the nutrients present (or lacking), the direction of a slope, the amount of shade and moisture, to the plants living in a particular place. I fell in love with Edgewood based on learning these things and I expect most visitors will too.