Flower fanatics go to extremes

Never underestimate the power of flowers. Just a few years ago, Roy van de Hoek, director of research and restoration for the Wetlands Action Network, found himself out on San Clemente, a Navy-controlled island in the Channel Islands, tiptoeing through unexploded bombshell turf in search of rare blooms.

At the end of a day like that, says Van de Hoek, “you think: ‘I’m not going to take that kind of chance again.’ And then you do.... In the name of nature and science, I would go a little bit beyond what’s safe.”

As serious flower people like Van de Hoek will tell you, the pursuit of wildflowers is part pilgrimage, part scavenger hunt, part extreme sport with perils aplenty.

Some chase flowers for their sheer beauty. For others, it’s all about building a list, spotting something rare, catching a fleeting natural phenomenon.

Ralph Hoffman, director of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, would surely agree, if he could. But on a July cliff-climbing quest for seeds on San Miguel in the Channel Islands, Hoffman fell to his death.

Granted, that happened in 1932. But perils like the following persist:

The earth and beasts are treacherous.

In the field, much of the time “you’re on totally uneven terrain, so you have to watch your ankles,” says Holliday Wagner, nursery manager at the Theodore Payne Foundation for Wildflowers and Native Plants in Sun Valley. Apart from rocks, mud and the occasional waking rattlesnake or leaping mountain lion, there are the thorns of neighboring cacti to consider, and diabolical rabbits, which like to chew on the very plants you’re desperate to find.

And then there are the belly flowers -- “because you have to be on your belly to see them,” says Wagner. A sure sign of committed flower fiends, she says, is “a lot of people in very odd places on their stomachs.”

Stink happens.

Sure, some wildflowers smell sweetly. David Clendenen, manager of the Wind Wolves Preserve south of Bakersfield, loves the bush lupin, Lupinus albifrons, which reminds him of a lilac and a rose at the same time.

But get a snootful of bladderpod and you’ll sing a different song. Beyond its gorgeous yellow blooms and the hummingbirds it attracts, the bladderpod offends Wagner with its “acrid” odor. She has similar issues with poodle-dog bush, which smells “just icky. It’s like the worst of perfumes. Nasty undertone.”

Same with the California buckeye, a white-petaled flower you can often see from Interstate 5 on the Grapevine. What you can’t see, says Clendenen, is their odor, overpowering and “sickeningly sweet.”

Without solid scholarship or an excellent poker face, you’re doomed.

It takes some serious study to keep all your flora straight. And if you really want to be taken seriously, you’ll need to know your way around Latin nomenclature. (First lesson: In Latin names, the capitalized first word indicates genus. The lower-case second word indicates species.)

Temptation is hazardous.

Beckoning as they may seem, it’s illegal to pick flowers on most federally managed lands. The same goes for state and local parks. No matter where you are, stick to platonic relations with poppies. Because they’re the state flower, picking poppies in California is forbidden.

Still, flowers get picked, and flower keepers take protective action. Consider the rare species that turned up at the Wind Wolves Preserve two years ago: Mimulus pictus, known as the calico monkey flower.

The flower is found only in a few sites in California. Clendenen and his staff have found just one “little spot” on the preserve where they expect it to bloom again this year, but don’t expect him to tell you where.

It’s too vulnerable, says Clendenen. “I’d rather not say.”

So the mystery remains. The 150-square-mile preserve, about an hour’s drive north of Los Angeles, remains open by reservation on weekends to visitors on foot. Let the monkey flower hunting begin.