Los Angeles residents hoping to see a super bloom this spring don't need to look far: A field of flowers has sprung up between the runways at Los Angeles International Airport.
A series of recent storms and heavy rains have caused a large swath of orange flowers to bloom on the unpaved grassy sections of the airport runways.
For the record:
13:49 April 9, 2024An earlier version of this story said the “colorful Montezuma Grade” is expected to appear in Anza Borrego Desert State Park as the weather warms. The Montezuma Grade is a path that winds through the park. It's not a flower.
“Over the years, the LAX super bloom has grown to become one of the most special and natural experiences the airport has to offer to guests flying in and out of Los Angeles in the spring,” Dae Levine, general director of marketing and communications for Los Angeles World Airports, said in a statement.
“If you take off or land at LAX in the coming weeks, be sure to look out the window for a glimpse of this rare sighting.”
Wildflowers also appeared on the runways at LAX in the spring of 2019, after severe winter storms.
When the flowers bloomed in 2019, a debate arose between airport officials and native plant experts about whether the flowers emerged on their own or were planted.
Tim Becker, director of horticulture at the Theodore Payne Foundation, said the flower fields at LAX are “wild, but not in California.” The flowers appear to be gazanias, also known as African daisies, a plant native to South Africa that spreads so easily that the California Invasive Plant Council considers it invasive.
While plenty of blooms can be seen at Southern California's busiest airport, golden poppies have been noticeably absent from some of the places where flora fans gather to see them, like the California Poppy Reserve from Antelope Valley this year. This is in part because the deluge of consecutive storms makes it easier for invasive grasses and plants to flourish, which then outcompete native plants like poppies.
But wildflowers have emerged in other parts of Southern California.
The Theodore Payne Foundation Wildflower Hotline updates every Friday through June on where wildflower super blooms are occurring. The information can be accessed via telephone message by calling (818) 768-1802 Ext. 7, subscribing to the podcast or reading the online blog.
Botanist Lorrae Fuentes, who has created a network of colleagues to report wildflower sightings in central and southern California, has compiled the information.
As of last report on March 22, spring wildflowers are blooming in the Habitat Gardens at Elizabeth Learning Center in Cudahy. They include creosote bush, desert lavender, apricot mallow, desert bluebells, milkweed, and more.
At Anza Borrego Desert State Park, brittlebushes and other species of desert shrubs have flourished.
In the southern Sierra foothills, blue oaks and redbuds have been seen in Visalia, while fiddleheads, shooting stars, spring riverside beauties and rusty popcorn flowers have bloomed in Eastwood.
In the Los Padres National Forest, along California's central coast, swaths of California poppies, California buttercups, purple shooting stars, and fields of gold fill the hillsides. They can be seen along the Figueroa Mountain Road from Los Olivos.
In the San Gabriel Mountains, wildflowers have begun to bloom along the first stretch of the Canyon Trail at the Placerita Canyon Nature Center in Newhall. Hikers may see California buckwheat, brook willow, black sage, large-berry manzanita, and hairy ceanothus.
