Spring Poppies

These California poppies (Eschschalzia californica) are in bloom where we've planted them under our mail box. It is the state flower and a sign of what passes for spring here in Southern California. Our climate is so temperate that spring isn't so much a sign of warmer temperatures as it is a change from a wet to a dry moisture regime.

The heart of their range is northeast of here in the Tehachapi Mountains and the Antelope Valley where State Parks owns the California Poppy Reserve. Up there the flowers are so thick that hillsides turn bright orange at the height of the bloom in late March and early April.