The pink flowers of August

August 29th, 2008 by Marian Bennett
Categories: Living Here

You can see them all over the Half Moon Bay Coastside this month. Here they are on neighborhood sidewalks and providing color to an otherwise bare residential lot in Miramar.

I first noticed them a few weeks ago on a walk with my friend along the Coastside Trail in Half Moon Bay. She would like them in her yard, she said. Every since then, I’ve been noticing them everywhere.

While I do know the names of a few local varieties, I don’t know the name of this one. I’ve heard these called “painted ladies”.

Half Moon Bay CA flowers - painted ladies - up close

Their vibrant pink color is starting to fade now that it is almost September. If you missed them this year, look for them next August. They are stunning as a blast of color on a foggy day.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 29th, 2008 at 11:37 am and is filed under Living Here. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Arnel Salvatierra said at October 10th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
A friend and I were driving on Hwy 1 along the Mendocino coast from Mendocino to Occidental and we saw these conspicuous flowers popping up every now and then along the road. They were usually in little clumps of two to six flowers and stood out against the low grass. We stopped at Bistro Des Copains for dinner and asked people at the bar if they knew anything about them. The girl behind the bar said they were called “pink ladies,” and a patron at the bar said they bloom during the dry parts of the year — usually three months after the last rains.

Hoping to find out more about them, I googled “pink flower california coast” and stumbled across your page!