BACKBONE TREK
LIST OF BLOOMING WILDFLOWERS IDENTIFIED

In the spring, the Santa Monica Mountains turns into a virtual garden of wildflowers. Visitors are often delightfully surprised at the diversity of the flora in the mountains. On the Backbone Trek, we usually count 140 to 150 species of wildflowers on the trail. For those hikers with more than a casual in interest in the wildflowers, we recommend the following guide: Wildflowers of the Santa Monica Mountains, by Milt McAuley, 2nd Edition, 1996, Canyon Publishing Company. This book will be available for sale at the Backbone Trek at a discounted price of $10.00.

The following list of the wildflowers sighted in bloom during the Backbone Trek 2009 is typical of the species to be seen on the hike. Some years are better than others (think rain and fire). By default the list is sorted by the order the flower was first encountered on the trek. You may also sort by common name, scientific name, or the section of trail where it was first seen by selecting the option and choosing any of the column headers.

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* Sequence column denotes the order and day the plant was first encountered on the Trek.

Milt McAuley's 1996 edition of Wildflowers of the Santa Monica Mountains was the primary reference.

We listed only those plants that were blooming and left out the plants that we could not identify. Comparing the list with previous years, we can see several more flowers that we must have overlooked on 2009's trek.