Readers’ wildlife photos

Today origami master and physicist Robert Lang, who’s rebuilding his house and studio destroyed by fire, sends part 1 of a two-part series on California wildflowers. Roberts’s captions and ID’s are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Reader’s Wildlife Photos: Southern California Wildflowers, Part 1

Although my usual Altadena hiking routes are off-limits due to closures resulting from the Eaton Fire in January 2025, there are still some pretty nice hikes not far away, and the end of May is a superb time to see wildflowers. This installment (which is a two-parter) includes wildflowers of Southern California from a route up Mount Lukens, the highest point in the city of Los Angeles, at 5075 feet elevation. Although the route is pretty much chaparral all the way, the changes in elevation and slope direction encompass a variety of climatic conditions within a single jaunt, providing a variety of blooms to see along the way. These are in no particular order: I shot some of them going up, some coming down. IDs are courtesy of iNaturalist.

Annual cryptanthus (Cryptantha sp.) has a common name of “popcorn flower,” and indeed, its tiny clusters of white blossoms do look a bit like popcorn kernels (and they’re about that size).

Blue elder (Sambucus cerulea) is technically a shrub, rather than a tree, but they get pretty big along the Lukens trail.

There are a lot of paintbrush (Castilleja) species in Southern California; iNat thinks this is Camp Martin paintbrush (Castilleja martini):

This time of year, caterpillar scorpionweed (Phacelia cicutaria) has tiny lavender flowers. In the fall, their seed heads look amazingly like caterpillars (especially after they fall off the plants):

Chaparral whitethorn (Ceanothus leucodermis) has beautiful plumes of lavender flowers and in places, carpets the mountainside with their blooms for a few weeks. Their thorns are vicious, though, and it forms impenetrable thickets at higher elevations in the San Gabriels:

Palmer ceanothus (Ceanothus palmeri) looks a lot like the more common chaparral whitethorn but has pure white blossoms. This one was getting the once-over from what looks like a European honeybee (Apis mellifera):

Dudley’s clarkia (Clarkia dudleyana) continues the theme of purple. It’s in the primrose family.

Golden yarrow (Eriophyllum confertiflorum) has clusters of yellow flowers that, from a distance, look like they might be dandelion flowers, but they’re clusters of small flowers, just roughly the same size and color as the former.

Hoary rock-rose (Cistus creticus) is a non-native member of the rose family. It’s not particularly aggressive, and its crepe-paper-like petals are delicate and lovely, so I like it:

There are several varieties of Lupine (Lupinus sp.) in Southern California; neither iNat (nor I) could pin down this one. It’s a member of the pea family. Behind this are the San Gabriel mountain peaks to the north of Mount Lukens:

All photos were taken with an iPhone, as my “nice” camera is currently a lump of slag that I haven’t yet replaced. More flowers coming in part 2.