The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area has a Flower Finder. It's fun to know what you're pointing at. The "faded" California poppies I identified today--mostly yellow, not orange--were actually Collarless California poppies. They weren't dying after all.
There's a long version with notes and a compact version.
We also saw snakes, or a snake. Not sure. I tried chanting "red then yellow, kill a fellow; red then black, venom lack," but I was too busy getting ready to die to do any competent color analysis. Patrick courageously snapped photos.
I am now certain we encountered a Mexican Milk snake (click picture for stripe inspection). Venom lack! According to the Park Service, there is only one type of poisonous snake in the SM Mountains area, and it's a rattler.
