Fire poppies blooming along Baron Ranch Corridor.
An extraordinary flush of canyon sunflowers now covers many places likely to hold fire poppies.
The curvaceous winding slopes under thickening oak canopy, cleaned by wildfire three years ago, now bulge with sunflower bushes standing four to six feet tall, shoulder to shoulder, as far as eyes can see through the late afternoon gloom of heavy sea fog.
In Refugio Canyon two canyons over, as made privy to by a commenter on the blog, more than 80 inches of rain have fallen this season.
The season prior rainfall county-wide measured in at over 200%-of-normal and in this water year we’re over 140%-of-normal so far.
The swiftly swelling forest is now closing fast, shrouding the mountain and erasing the Alisal Fire scar, disappearing the favored places to sprout of the fire poppies.
Who knows? They may not grow here for decades.
Last year I found two stands of the poppies far removed from each other, a smattering of plants each, perhaps a score, as many as I’ve ever seen at once anywhere, which is never many.
I don’t believe anybody else saw those particular plants or would know they even existed. I’m just telling it how it is. That’s all.
They won’t let you see the plants.
How can you when they won’t allow a hillwalker to so much as set foot off their narrow little blinkered path?
In their purported “dedication to environmental stewardship and public access,” County of Santa Barbara officials and employees will not allow the few interested folks to see the most beautiful of “Gaviota’s ecological treasures.”
In the name of access and stewardship you can’t go and so you won’t know.
Although one of the growsites this year remains relatively open with some patches of bare soil or gravelly substrate still showing, not one plant could be found on this day by our indefatigable wanderer of lands of lesser interest.
This season a six hour walkabout turned up only two individual plants beside each other, as seen here, “immediately adjacent to the trail.”
Next year I expect none will be found.
The tender plants grew from this rocky ground.
Related Posts:
The Twelve-Inch Experience, Baron Ranch Corridor
Jack Elliott's Santa Barbara Adventure 
Thank you for showing us the fire poppies. It’s been over 50 years since I ventured into that particular back country. And back then I was on my pony not likely to get a real close look at the poppies.
Those are a truly beautiful colour!