This season’s flowers might leave behind more than the seeds of future blooms. “Just providing more things to think about, some extra layers, without just being like, ‘No, that’s bad, don’t like that flower.’ That’s the nuance of a real-life conversation.” What do you think that plant thinks?’” he said. And do we see what it’s doing to the other plants around it? Those ones have some pretty flowers too, but they’re kind of in the shade now. All the rain made them huge! Here’s where this plant comes from. “I’ll say, ‘Yeah, it’s amazing how big these got. Wise says he tries not to crush that sense of wonder. When Wise takes groups of children on nature hikes and they see plants taller than they are, they don’t bother to ask if they’re invasive before exclaiming with joy.

Today’s wildflowers will make further deposits into the seed bank that can survive in the soil for years until the right conditions come along - provided no one plows them under to build a big-box store or put up a parking lot. It’s an evolutionary strategy that lets plants play the long game: A few seeds from the bank are deputized to flower and drop more seeds, while the rest hold off on entering the vulnerable baby plant stage until conditions are more promising.Ī bumper year like this one is both a visual feast and a down payment on future blooms. In periods of prolonged drought like we’ve experienced the last few years, many annual plants will allow only a selection of their seeds to flower. “Then they get a good rain and a cold winter to prime them beforehand, and they go crazy.” “They can hang out there until the next good year,” which could be next season or the next decade. For a native annual like our state flower, the California poppy, “their whole life cycle is based on flowering quickly and making seeds and getting those seeds into what we call the seed bank in the soil,” he said.

Mustard Been You by Eve London