Southern California meadows welcome spring with fields of golden poppies

Titi Mary Tran/Nguoi-Viet English

LAKE ELSINORE, Calif. (NV) – Everyone’s mood was elevated, as if they had just taken some golden medicine for their souls.

Countless visitors flocked to Walker Canyon near Lake Elsinore in Southern California one March weekend to experience the bloom of the native California golden poppy flowers.

Painting the entire canyon with her golden brush, Mother Nature revealed the gorgeous life of the desert. And then the rain came. The luscious green background topped the strokes of golden poppy flowers spread across the canyon, replacing what usually is a blanket of gray, dark rocks mixed with dusty wind and rolling tumbleweeds.

Visitors lined up to climb the hills and take pictures, finding a perfect photo location after securing a parking spot along the road. Families traveled from afar, bringing along their loved ones to experience nature’s beauty.

Tram Dao, a 50-year-old San Jose resident who was visiting friends and family in Southern California, set up a photo station with her iPhone and a remote auto click at the edge of the hiking trail.

“Come here and take a picture with Mommy,” Dao urged her son, who was running up and down the trail and enjoying the flower field.

Others took a more relaxed approach. They settled down right on the flowers, enjoying a family picnic and looking to the horizon, not realizing that other nature-loving people were cursing them for what they said was a selfish attitude toward the beauty.

“I’m so upset with them,” one middle-aged female hiker said.

Visitors will have 10 to 13 weeks to enjoy the bright golden field of California poppy this spring. Other super blooms are happening throughout Southern California, including in the Anza Borrego Desert and the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve.

According to the Flower Essence Society, the California poppy is a native wildflower and also is the official state flower. This bright, four-petal golden flower is adaptable and grows throughout North America’s West Coast. It favors “open sunny, habitats with sandy, well-drained soils and is summer-drought tolerant.”

The golden flower also is capable of preserving its seeds after a long drought. It blooms when there is sunlight and closes when the weather is cold, cloudy, windy or dark. A California poppy’s life cycle has five stages: budding, the opening of a cap-like green calyx, unfurling, blooming and seeding.