California Wildflowers - Help ID Please. . .

With all the rain this year, the local canyons are filled with flowers. I had to take some pictures.

This particular area near San Diego burned in the 2003 Cedar fire. I watched the fire rage up this canyon at lightning speed. We left shortly before the fire reached us, but Channel 8 stayed and shot some amazing video. When the fire reached the top of this canyon, it shot up over 80 feet in the air. The TV crew ran for their lives with the camera running. No one was hurt, but my two next door neighbors lost their homes. I was really lucky that the firefighters were there. It took them over 2 hours to save my home. They will always be my heroes.

My neighbors have since rebuilt and the canyon vegetation has fully recovered. It is more beautiful than ever!! My pictures don’t do them justice.

I would appreciate your help in getting to know these plants. I will start with a Ceanothus which is my favorite. Does anyone know what variety of Ceanothus this is?

There are hundreds of Ceanothus in this canyon and about 1% of them are white. They are beautiful. I would love to know the varitey of this white. I'll try to get better a picture of a white. This is the best I have at the moment.

Last Ceanothus pic. This shows the leaves better and may help with an ID.

Picture #4:

These little patches of color are dotted in various places around the canyon. Prior to the fires, the brush was over 15 feet tall and very thick. These little guys didn't have much of a chance. Any idea what they are?

Picture #5:

These grow very well in the canyon, even on the southwest facing slopes which get very hot. It is great to see them bloom. Sorry for the poor photo. ID?

Picture: 6

A remnant of the pre-fire brush. You can see how big it was. There is no written record of fire in this particular area before the Cedar fire in 2003.

Picture 7:

What is this yellow? Note the little sea of Ceanothus in the background.

Picture #8:

Here is a beautiful little purple vine growing over the same.

Picture #9:

This native sage has such a great smell! ID?

Any chance you can get better shots of some of the flowers? It's hard to tell what some of them are without that.

#5 looks like some sort of Mimulus/Diplacus.
#4: do you have a picture of the flowers when they're open? I suspect Gazania (not a native, but very common)
#7 a closer picture of the flowers would help...it might be Lotus scoparius though.
#8 there are a lot of invasive things from that family that grow around here--the flower color doesn't look quite like the Vicia that's always trying to take over my garden, but I think it's related (and most likely not native)

Can't help with a single id but wanted to let you know I looked. The only one that looks familiar is #7 - I thought a scoparius too.

I had the same thoughts about #5 and #7.

Re the white ceanothus - try looking at http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=4651046
Anything like this? I can try getting a better picture of it for you.
If you look at the plant database here www.laspilitas.com they have a lot of ceanothus and sage varieties you can browse through.

I'm so pleased for you that the area has recovered so quickly. It's a testament to the belief that re-seeding is not necessary and in most cases a bad idea. :-)

Kathleen

Beautiful plants TLeaves,
Josephine.

Very pretty and so nice that plants are growing back!

Thanks for the ID help ecrane. I'll try to get some closer pictures of the flowers. Re #4, the sun wasn't out so the flowers were closed.

Wow K - That is a georgeous white Ceanothus! I'll need to get a better look to see if that is the one. You're right, re-seeding shouldn't be necessary. Everything in my yard turned completely black after the fire, including the large trees. In a few months, things started to grow back and eventually everything recovered - except a handful of shrubs near the hottest fire. Nature is resilient! My neighbor had one Bailey Acacia on the edge of his property. Now there are Bailey's everywhere.

I'm glad everyone is enjoying the pic's. I will get back down there to take some closer pic's if the weather holds out tomorrow - and the sun is out. :)

I looked at #4 more closely and compared with the gazanias around here on a cloudy day and I don't think that's it anymore, when gazanias are closed the tips of the petals look more spiky and there are more petal tips visible. Unfortunately I don't have any other ideas unless you can get a pic of them when they're open! Only other thing I could come up with was Arctotis (also not native) but they don't grow wild up here so I'm not sure if they open only on sunny days or not.

Picture #4 - Close Up:

Here is a close up picture of # 4. I thought it was a better photo until I saw it on the computer.

Actually it does help, it confirms my suspicion that it's not Gazania and makes me think more that it is Arctotis. I think if the petals unfolded that's what it would look like. I assume you've seen them open at some point? Here's a pic of Arctotis, maybe you can tell if it looks the same or not.
http://www.calflora.org/cgi-bin/species_query.cgi?where-calrecnum=635