In spite of a very rainy weather forecast we went hiking very close to home last weekend, on Saturday 2/21. We found pretty views and lots of springflowers.
Footsteps of Spring
Blue Eyed Grass
California Poppy
Johnny Jump Up
Yellow Sorrel
What is she watching?
Oh.
California Poppy
Rare Franciscan Wallflower (habitat destroyed)
Mallow
Indian Paintbrush
Checker Mallow – Sidalcea malviflora
Leilani climbed a Rock
Blue Eyed Grass
Pussywillow
Ginster in German, maybe California Broom?
I question your identification of the lovely purple flower you call a checker mallow; it has none of the characteristics of any other mallow I’ve photographed or seen. A google search of images and websites, using check mallow as the search term, will indicate what I’m talking about.
The family of the mallows is very diverse. I saw the whole plant in nature, not just the flower and I am sure it is a mallow. It is still in bloom on San Bruno mountain, if you are local you should go and check it out, best wildflowers I have seen this year.
Sidalcea is a genus of the botanical family Malvaceae. It contains several species of flower known generally as checkerblooms or checkermallows
You can read more about them on them at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidalcea and
http://www.calflora.org/cgi-bin/specieslist.cgi?orderby=taxon&where-genus=Sidalcea&ttime=1272121620