Homestead Valley Wildflower Treasure Hunt

Homestead Valley is a fun place to look for wildflowers in Marin County. It’s like a combination of a maze and a treasure hunt. There are many intersecting trails, so you need a good map to find your way around the maze. As for the treasure hunt, the maps show you where many interesting flowers are located, but it takes some work to find them! Fortunately, the Homestead Valley Land Trust provides a wonderful, annotated map of the area.

Note: Click on any photograph to see a larger image.

The Hike

This is an interesting mixture of deep-shaded forest (including a grove of redwoods), open meadow, scrub brush and grassy hillsides. There is a wide variety of habitats and therefore a wide range of flower types, all in a fairly small area.

Trails here cross over a number of different land management units. Some of the trails are in Marin Country Parks open space, managed by the Homestead Valley Land Trust. Portions of the trails are in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The area is right on the edge of Mount Tamalpais State Park, if you are looking for additional places to hike.

I highly recommend getting the Homestead Valley trail map, which provides great detail on the trails here. In addition, go to their blooming now page and click on the most recent date listed. Here you will find another copy of the map that lists the flower species that have been seen this year, along with notations on the specific locations where these flowers were found. I never would have found some of the amazing flowers in this area without the help of these maps!

We started at the trailhead on Panoramic Hwy, #9 on their map, because I knew there was parking along the roadside. There are a number of trailheads listed on the map, but the website doesn’t make it clear what the parking situation is like. Several of the trailheads are on residential streets, some are private roads. If you start at Panoramic Hwy you will be parking on a public road that is easy to access.

There are many options with interconnecting trails. Unfortunately, there are very few trail markers, so you have to keep track of each turn as you follow the map. I understand that in the future the Homestead Valley Land Trust hopes to place trail markers using the numbers that are on the map, which would be very helpful.

We wandered quite a bit, which was a good thing. Every section has a different selection of flowers. The trek we took covered about 3 miles with a fair amount of ups and downs, but the trails are not difficult. We didn’t need our hiking sticks.

Click the track to see an elevation graph. Move your mouse along the elevation graph to show the location on the map. The Refresh icon will re-center the map. The Expand icon will expand to full screen.

Timing is Everything

Since this is in Marin County I expect that there will be a long flower season. Our hike was in early March and some of the early blooming plants (such as Fetid adder’s tongue) were already finished. Lots of early season flowers, and a very large number of plants that were getting ready to bloom. I suspect that you’ll find something there any time from January through July.

I should mention that there is poison oak in many of the areas, so be careful if you wander off the path.

Directions

From Highway 101 near Mill Valley, take the exit for Highway 1 (exit 445B if you are heading south on 101) towards Stinson Beach. This is also known as Shoreline Highway. The road takes a sharp left turn in downtown Mill Valley. After 2.6 miles you will turn right onto Panoramic Highway. About 0.8 of a mile later you will come to the “Four Corners” junction of Panoramic Highway, Muir Woods Road and Sequoia Valley Road, where you’ll see a sign that directs you to Muir Woods, Mill Valley and Mt. Tamalpais State Park. Just before this intersection there is parking along the side of the road. The main trailhead is right at the junction, on the same side of the road as you will be parking.

There are no restrooms at this trailhead, or on any of the trails.

The Flowers

Click on any photograph to see a larger image.

We found quite a few Checker lilies on the hillside path near 4a on the Homestead Valley map. You can see the mottled appearance. I’ve never come across so many at one place before!

What is interesting about this location is that you can also find the Marin Checker Lily, which is similar but not “checkered” as strongly. The California Native Plant Society lists this as a rare/endangered plant. An exciting find!

Footsteps of Spring – you have to see this “in the wild” to understand why it has that name. Here’s a closeup of the plant:

We always found them in groups, arranged along the path as if they were marking every footstep that “spring” had taken.

Sometimes flowers are easy to find, sometimes you have to look under the leaves of the plant. It is easy to miss Fairy bells if you don’t look.

Fremont’s death camas is common in many places this time of year. Beautiful, but all parts are poisonous.

You can scroll through the photos below, or if you click on one it will show you a larger view with more detailed information. All photos are available for purchase in a variety of formats.

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In addition to what I show above, we found:

• Sun cup, Taraxia ovata
• Blue dicks, Dipterostemon capitatus subsp. capitatus (formerly Dichelostemma capitatum ssp. capitatum)
• Warrior’s plume, Pedicularis densiflora
• Purple sanicle, Sanicula bipinnatifida
• Starry false lily of the valley, Maianthemum stellatum
• Mosquito bill, aka Foothill shooting star, Primula hendersonii
• Oakland star tulip, aka Oakland mariposa lily, Calochortus umbellatus
• California buttercup, Ranunculus californicus
• Wild strawberry, Fragaria vesca
• Common trillium, Trillium chloropetalum
• Pacific trillium, Trillium ovatum
• Milk maids, Cardamine californica
• Miner’s lettuce, Claytonia perfoliata
• Western houndstongue, Cynoglossum grande
• California man-root, Marah fabacea

The following are non-native plants that we found on the hike as well:

• White flowered onion, Allium triquetrum
• Rosy sandcrocus, Romulea rosea
• Bermuda buttercup, Oxalis pes-caprae
• Scarlet pimpernel, Lysimachia arvensis
• French broom, Genista monspessulana
• Scotch broom, Cytisus scoparius
• Forget me not, Myosotis latifolia

I would like to thank Sandy Steinman and his Natural History Wanderings website for letting me know about this wonderful place to find wildflowers.