California Wildflower Photography Archive

A Biodiversity Hotspot

California’s native plants are part of the California Floristic Province—one of the world’s great biodiversity hotspots—where an extraordinary concentration of endemic species has evolved through cycles of scarcity and abundance, relying on dormancy and sudden, explosive growth to survive an unpredictable climate. This biodiversity hotspot is a zone of Mediterranean-type climate and is characterized by hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters. The province encompasses a wide range of habitats, from coastal sage scrub and oak woodlands to alpine peaks and desert margins. Across these varied environments, more than 3,000 vascular plant species have been recorded, with roughly 60 percent found nowhere else on Earth. This high level of endemism reflects a long history of isolation, adaptation and ecological specialization.

A Landscape with a Human History

Early Spanish explorers described California as la tierra del fuego—a land seemingly set ablaze by fields of brilliant orange flowers stretching to the horizon. Nineteenth-century settlers wrote of immense wildflower pastures from San Francisco to San Diego and communities celebrated spring with festivals honoring this natural heritage. Most importantly, Native Americans revered and cherished the land’s floral rebirth after winter, utilizing California’s native plants for food, medicine, clothing and shelter.

An Unpredictable Convergence

Among the California Floristic Province, vast wildflower blooms are the most unpredictable, governed by a delicate interplay of water, soil, sunlight, temperature, insects, grazing herbivores, fire and time. When they occur, the landscape becomes a living, breathing expression of the ecosystem itself—an extraordinary surge of life that feeds, connects and sustains the countless species that share it.

Many of the locations documented here are increasingly threatened by development, invasive species, agriculture and climate pressures. Areas once famous for vast wildflower displays—including regions now absorbed by urban expansion—exist today only in memory and photographs.

This work stands as both celebration and record: a visual chronicle of landscapes that are changing and in some cases quietly disappearing.

To witness a major bloom is to feel immersed in color, fragrance, light and motion. Flowers open and close with the sun, ephemeral species appear at dusk and vanish by morning and entire hillsides shift in tone as the day unfolds. Through these photographs, the intention is to offer viewers a sense of presence—an invitation to witness a rare convergence of time, climate and living systems.

Feral Flowers is a 40-year photographic archive dedicated to preserving landscapes once in bloom—many irreversibly altered by development and land use—ensuring their presence endures in memory and record.

The term FERAL is taken from the old Latin meaning “of the wild” or “from the wild” and is a separate translation closely related to “once domesticated and returned to the wild,” which is more contemporary.

This project began in 1986 and has grown organically over decades—rooted in observation, persistence and transformation. The archive brings together archival materials, Field Notes, photographic records and reflections that had never previously been gathered in one place.

Among these materials are long-term documentations of the Hills of Gorman, California—once considered the crown jewel of California’s recurring Super Blooms. Between the 1970s and the early 2000s, the hills burst into wildflower displays every three to five years, reaching their peak with California’s largest and most diverse Super Bloom in 2003. A 2,800-acre wildflower preserve was even proposed by UCLA Extension. Then, the bloom cycles gradually ceased. And now they’re gone.

What happened? The answer holds a few intriguing insights—including an unexpected connection to a prominent grocery store chain. The expanded archive quietly explores this question and others.

When this work began in the mid-1980s, very few people were documenting California’s large-scale wildflower blooms. Today these spectacular events—widely shared across social media—are commonly called Super Blooms. What began as a personal effort to understand when and where these rare landscapes appeared gradually became a long-term visual record of some of California’s most extraordinary and ephemeral natural events.

The archive will continue to expand as additional photographs, Field Notes and historical material from this decades-long body of work are brought online.