Recapturing California’s Wildflower Heritage
Planning a trip to see wildflowers this spring? Make sure your itinerary includes a stop at The Huntington, where a major new exhibition,“When They Were Wild”, draws on a rich heritage of wildflower illustration to take a closer look at California’s natural and horticultural history.
The exhibition is a collaborative project of The Huntington, Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont, Calif., and the Theodore Payne Foundation for Wild Flowers and Native Plants in Sun Valley, Calif. Works from all three collections, along with loans from several other public and private collections, will be on view in the Huntington show, with related displays at the two other institutions and at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden.
California has one of the most diverse floras in the world, spread across several distinct floristic provinces—regions of plant distribution defined by shared climate, geology, and geography. Three of the state’s primary provinces are the Californian (chaparral, coastal sage scrub, oak woodland, and grassland), Vancouverian (mixed evergreen and coniferous forests), and Desert (cacti and desert scrub).
“When They Were Wild” is arranged thematically into four sections: Heritage explores the conditions that gave rise to the most diverse flora in the United States.
