Friday, April 22, 2011

Red Car Property: Please Don't Pick The Native Wildflowers!

Photo: Diane Edwardson, April 16, 2011.  Someone keeps picking the California Poppies blooming on the slope between the Viaduct Footings and the last house on Adelbert.  (Click on photo to enlarge.) 

This year we have a sad show of wildflowers on the Red Car Property.  Most likely, because brush clearance happened early, before everything went to seed last year. 

Very few native Lupines came back to the meadow on the south end of the Red Car Property. Blue Fiesta Flowers, California Poppies and Kotolo Milkweed are sorely lacking this year. The patch of California Fuchsia has mostly died off.  Golden Stars have yet to make an appearance.   Spanish Lotus is back and should bloom next month. 

Native wildflowers reseed themselves and return to the same spots year after year.  Unlike the non-native, invasive species, they don't take over an entire territory.  They cling to their small patch of earth, which is how I know where to find them every year. 

PLEASE DO NOT PICK THE WILDFLOWERS!  Let everyone enjoy them while we can.

Click here for the Red Car Property Neighborhood's catalog of native plants.