Northern California Wildflower Art: Painting, Identifying, and Prioritizing Beauty

If you could believe you'd been put here on Earth primarily to appreciate its beauty, I think you'd find time for very little else. Even a hundred years wouldn't be enough to look at every wildflower, visit every tree, or learn every birdsong near you. There is always a surprise, always something more over the next hill, down the next ditch, or someplace deeper in the forest.

If more of us were raised to believe our observation of the magnificence around us and our expressions of gratitude for the abundance we see are the main work of our lives, few among us would have time left over for greed, unkindness, and war. We would be too busy following the flowers through the seasons. This would keep our spirits bright.

This painting is my Northern California wildflower journal, painted over the course of eight months from January to August, and is a particular celebration of the plant communities of the San Francisco Bay Area. I began knowing them on childhood walks with my mother. She quietly conveyed that the plants were important, and so I grew up thinking this way.

There are more than a hundred plants here, divided into four progressive panels by tall umbellifers. Starting in the upper left, you can follow the realistic groupings of wildflowers down the first panel and then move over to the second, meeting butterflies and other small residents and visitors along the way. Prints of this painting can act as a kind of calendar each year, telling you what to be on the lookout for if you live in California or are planning to visit.

Many of the plants shown here have been cared for by Indigenous folk for millennia. Others have come more recently. I wanted to present a realistic depiction of all that I see on roadsides, in creek beds, and coloring the pastures of our part of California. Seeds have always traveled in the beaks of birds, the fur of animals, and the baggage of ancient peoples. All this beauty is around us, for free, and taking time to give thanks for it must surely be good for our hearts.

List of Northern California wildflowers seen in this painting:

January to February

• Wild calendula

• Fiddlenecks

• Toothwort

• Shooting stars

• Giant wake robin

• Houndstongue

• Miner’s lettuce

• Baby blue eyes

• Mule’s ears

• Suncups

• Storksbill

• Long-beaked storksbill

• Geranium

• Nettles

• Field madder

• Chickweed

• California buttercups

• Cream cups

• California poppies

• Scarlet delphinium

• Blue dicks

• Common meadowfoam

• Salmonberry

• Sand crocus

• Clover

• Coast rockcress

• White yarrow

• Red maids

• Rosy sand crocus

  
  

March to April

• Trillium

• Redwood sorrel

• Redwood violet

• False Solomon’s seal

• Fairy bells

• Tellima

• Pacific starflower

• Woodland strawberry

• California mist maidens

• Woodland star

• Western buttercup

• American brooklime

• Golden seep monkeyflower

• Checkerbloom

• Bee plant

• Johnny jump-ups

• Various lupine

• Clover

• Blue-eyed grass

• Star tulips

• Scarlet columbine

• Painted warrior

• Paintbrush

• Johnny tuck

• Douglas iris

• Manroot

• California poppies

• Goldfields

• Queen Anne’s lace

  
  

May to June

• Rosa californica

• Chinese houses

• Gold globe lilies

• Camas

• Ground iris

• Cudweed

• Himalayan blackberry

• Native blackberry

• Wild radish

• Pennyroyal

• Rosa eglanteria

• Vetch

• Lineseed

• Fleabane

• Bird’s foot trefoil

• Dock

• California poppy

• Lotus

• Fritillaria

• Sheep sorrel

• Red sand spurry

• Brass buttons

  
  

July to August

• Fennel

• Salsify

• Thimbleberry

• Sticky monkeyflower

• Chicory

• Wavy-leaf soap plant

• Sweet peas

• Ithuriel’s spear

• Farewell-to-spring

• Pineapple weed

• Dog fennel

• Turkey tangle frogfruit

• Tarweed

• Hawksbit

• Pearly everlasting

• Phacelia

• Coast buckwheat

• Purple sanicle

• Evening primrose

Choosing how we spend time

I think we have some very curious ideas in my country about time being wasted unless it is spent doing and getting things. Meanwhile, marketing wants to persuade us that large portions of our time should be devoted to staring into screens. I would rather spend as much time as possible with the wildflowers. I don't think my time has been wasted learning where to visit them and when, and the many different names given to them by people. My heart kindles with each encounter of each arriving plant in season, and coming upon a wildflower I don't yet know makes a day one of the best in my life.

C.S. Lewis spent his life pondering the joy he'd fleetingly encountered in a miniature garden. One of J.R.R. Tolkien's most treasured books was a guide to his country's flora, and he dreamed of tree shepherds who walked Middle-earth tending the forests. Indigenous author Robin Wall Kimmerer invites us to learn abundance from the plants who give to all; food, fragrance, touch, wisdom, healing, and such lavish beauty.

If the times are feeling fraught and fearful for you right now, and you have any opportunity to step away to spend time seeking flowers, I think you will find a little relief. Their palette changes like a kaleidoscope across spring and summer, ending with a silver, gold, and pink finale like a fireworks display of starry soap plant, the rugged tarweed, and lyrical farewell-to-spring. There is still time to go out and see all this for yourself, and even when summer ends, hanging a piece of art in your home might help you prioritize how you spend your thoughts. But even when the flowers in the outside world fade, fall arrives with its own riches of leaf and berry, and spring will come again.

Please enjoy spending a few minutes following the flowers in this video short: