Share Your Wildflower Photos from Northern CA and Northwest USA with DesertUSA
Please share pictures for Northern CA and Northwest USA Wildflower Reports, including the date and location. We will post your photos on our Wildflower Reports page, so others can learn where and when to view the spectacular displays.
- E-mail your digital photos and reports to Jim@desertusa.com. Use Wildflower Report as the subject of your e-mail. Let us know where you took the image, the date, and how you would like us to give you photo credit (first name, etc.)
2026 Northern California and the Northwest Wildflowers reports.
March 9, 2026 Dave Reports: I wanted to give you an update on the East Bay Area (east of San Francisco): The wildflowers are blooming early this year because of the warm weather and the rains in February. Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll see anything spectacular since the rain mostly stopped at the end of last month. Temperatures are now reaching the high 70s, the ground is drying out, and grass is starting to die off on south-facing slopes. Still, there are some nice areas. The two photos attached were taken in Livermore along the Arroyo Mocho Bike Path, which can be accessed from either Arroyo Road or Holmes Street in Livermore. The poppies are on the south side of the creek. I’m planning several hikes over the next few weeks and will email you if there are more displays.
March 5, 2026 Larry Reports: March 3, Pinnacles National Park, East Side along Old Pinnacles Trail which follows Chalone Creek. No large expanses of flowers, but a variety blooming right now along the trails.
March 1, 2026 Craig Reports: Kite Hill Wildflower Preserve in the Town of Woodside, 300 Jane Drive. Park behind the gate and walk in—open 24/7. The spring Super Bloom is underway. Goldfields are in full bloom where Jane Drive comes closest to the I-280 fence. Kite Hill’s serpentine side has been fertilized several times, and goldfields are thriving, in stark contrast to unfertilized goldfields on the Caltrans side over the fence. Poppies are also in full bloom now. A very easy walk down Jane Drive gives you a nice view.
Feb 5, 2026 Craig Reports: February 5, 2026 — One of San Mateo County’s Super Bloom sites, is getting started at the 14-acres of the Kite Hill Wildflower preserve, owned by the Town of Woodside.
The Preserve’s Google address is 300 Jane Drive. Park along Jane Drive behind the Private Road gate, and walk in the pedestrian gate. The road behind the gate is private for vehicles, but open for people visiting the preserve on foot, bike or horseback.
Preserve goes nearly all the way to the end of Jane Drive, and there are a lot of easy trails. First to bloom are the poppies. If you walk down Jane Drive past the driveway of 315, is where the photo of the poppy patch was taken today. In March and April, millions of tidy tips bloom. In May, thousands of yellow Mariposa lilies bloom on the top.
Kite Hill is always a Super Bloom location, even during a severe drought, because all 14 acres of this serpentine grassland have been fertilized. For the last 10 years, the weeds have been mowed monthly to 8-12 inches high to prevent them from producing new weed seeds. No wildflower seeds have ever been sown; all sprout from dormant seeds in the soil, beneath the weeds.
Feb 5, 2026 David Reports: Visited San Luis Reservoir Wildlife Refuge, along Dinosaur Point Road, adjacent to the reservoir, State Route 152, and Pacheco State Park. Enjoyed verdant green hills of the blue oak savanna. This area typically shows the first spring wildflowers in the San Francisco Bay Area, and this winter, due to heavy holiday storms and subsequent mild, sunny January weather, wildflowers are emerging earlier than ever, though they will likely peak in a few weeks. The early flowers are not at Pacheco Pass but rather a bit further east, in the lee of marine fog pushing over the Coastal Range ridge line but above the valley fog belt.
Saw blooming padres, shooting stars, Henderson’s shooting stars, milk maids, fiddleneck, miner’s lettuce, johnny-jump-ups, California buttercup, and even a few California poppies, none of which have reached their species’ peak blooms this spring but are making the most of the early storm water. Generally, landscapes have dried out since the holiday storms, while a knee-high jungle of many green herbs and grasses is rising quickly.
Photos tips: Most digital point-and-shoot cameras have a macro function – usually symbolized by the icon of a little flower. When you turn on that function, you allow your camera to get closer to the subject, looking into a flower for example. Or getting up close and personal with a bug. More on desert photography.
Mojave Desert Wildflowers – This book is the standard by which all other wildflower books are measured. The author, Jon Mark Stewart, has combined super photography with concise information. This book has an entire color page for each wildflower covered, with a discussion of the wildflower. 210 pages with 200 color photos. More…
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