Meet The Writer Behind The Delightful Theodore Payne Wildflower Hotline

No, this isn’t a poem or a literary passage of prose.

Those are lines pulled straight from the Theodore Payne Wildflower Hotline — a unique and artfully written weekly assemblage of the best wildflower blooms in Southern and Central California. The free-service — relaunched just last week — has been in operation during the spring wildflower season for the last 41 years.

The hotline, which now comes with an extensive web component, is run by the member-funded Theodore Payne Foundation, best known for its mission to educate Southern Californians on native plants. While the hotline provides the public with useful tips on accessible and pre-scouted vantage points, with many of the destinations a doable drive from the Los Angeles metro area, what really sets the service apart to fans is the descriptive and sometimes lyrical language.

For more than a decade, the driving force has been a woman named Lorrea Fuentes.

From botanist to bard

For the past 14 years, Fuentes has coordinated production of the hotline, including writing the script. She’s not a writer by trade. Her gift for such lovingly detailed verse comes from her passion for plants.

The biology and botany professor retired from Cal State San Bernardino last year. She also was the education director at the California Botanic Garden in Claremont.

When asked how she developed her writing skills, Fuentes modestly deflected and said, “I've just been writing for a long time.”

When the Theodore Payne Foundation reached out for her to produce the hotline, she thought, “This would be fun,” said Fuentes. “It's me living vicariously through others because I obviously can't get out to see all these places. I like the challenge of knowing the names of all these plants, both their common names and their scientific names.”

From the field to your ears

As much as she would like to, Fuentes can’t survey half the state every week on her own, so she relies on a team of field reporters — people who work in parks, nature preserves, botanic gardens, and some folks who just hike regularly. And they send their findings to Fuentes along with photos.

Then she transforms the weekly highlights from the field into prose that are both pleasing to the ear and evoke clear images of colorful blooms — not to mention having to work in all the scientific names for the plants and travel tips.

Fuentes then fires off her script to Emmy-winning actor Joe Spano, who voices for the hotline (818 768-1802 Ext. 7) and the accompanying podcast.

California poppies

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Then she writes the even more detailed report, complete with recent photographs for the website.

And it all goes live every Friday around noon from March to June.

Fuentes' favorite flowers

Some of Fuentes' favorite spring blooms are perennials such as wild lilac and manzanita found in the foothills and higher elevations.

And she looks forward to the classic California poppy which, she wrote in 2022, made Grass Mountain in Santa Ynez come "alive with expansive patches of orange California poppies and purple-blue lupines — the classic California venue!”