Los Angeles residents hoping to see a superbloom this spring don’t need to go 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-colored flowers to bloom in the grassy unpaved sections of the airport’s runways.
For the record:
1:49 p.m. April 9, 2024An earlier version of this story said the “colorful Montezuma Grade” is expected to appear at Anza Borrego Desert State Park when the weather gets warmer. The Montezuma Grade is a road that winds through the park. It is not a flower.
“Over the years, the superbloom at LAX 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, managing director of marketing and communications for Los Angeles World Airports, said in a statement.
“If you happen to be taking off or touching down at LAX in the coming weeks, be sure to look outside your window to catch a glimpse of this rare sighting.”
Wildflowers also appeared on LAX runways in the spring of 2019, after heavy winter storms.
When the flowers blossomed in 2019, a debate sprouted among airport officials and native plant experts over whether the flowers sprang up on their own or were planted.
Tim Becker, horticulture director at the Theodore Payne Foundation, said that the fields of flowers at LAX are “wild, but not to California.” The flowers appear to be gazanias, also known as African daisies, a plant native to South Africa that spreads so easily it has been deemed invasive by the California Invasive Plant Council.
While a riot of flowers can be spotted at Southern California’s busiest airport, the golden poppies have been noticeably absent from some of the locations flora fanatics gather to see them, such as the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve this year. That is partly due to the deluge from back-to-back storms making it easier for invasive grasses and plants to flourish, which then out-compete the native plants like poppies.
But wildflowers have sprung up elsewhere in Southern California.
Theodore Payne Foundation’s Wild Flower Hotline updates every Friday into June about where wildflower superblooms are taking place. The information can be accessed through phone message by calling (818) 768-1802 Ext. 7, by subscribing to the podcast or by reading the online blog.
Botanist Lorrae Fuentes, who has built a network of colleagues to report wildflower sightings in Central and Southern California, has collected the information.
According to the latest report for March 22, springtime wildflowers are blooming at 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, brittlebush and other species of desert shrubs have bloomed.
In the southern Sierra foothills, blue oaks and redbuds have been spotted in Visalia while fiddlenecks, shooting stars, streambank spring beauties and rusty popcorn flowers have bloomed in Eastwood.
At Los Padres National Forest along the Central California coast, swaths of California poppies, California buttercups, purple shooting stars and goldfields fill the slopes. They can be seen along Figueroa Mountain Road from Los Olivos.
In the San Gabriel Mountains, wildflowers have started to bloom along the first leg of the Canyon Trail at the Placerita Canyon Nature Center in Newhall. Hikers can see California buckwheat, arroyo willow, black sage, big berry manzanita and hairy ceanothus.
