Cover Story

This Spring, the City’s Greenbelt began experiencing a super bloom of native flowers that were planted as part of a partnership between the City of Hermosa Beach and the South Bay Parkland Conservancy to add California native plants in support of the monarch and endangered El Segundo blue butterflies.

The project which has been further expanded through additional support by Leadership Hermosa, along with numerous volunteers, and donors, has targeted the replacement of invasive monocultures, such as ice plant, with native pollinator plants including sea cliff buckwheat.

The objective is to provide pollinators that bloom each season for the monarch butterflies that overwinter on the Greenbelt, by the hundreds this year, and to create an essential corridor to connect populations of the endangered blue butterflies located at the Chevron property in El Segundo and those on the Redondo Beach bluffs. Eucalyptus and pine trees, plentiful on the Hermosa greenbelt, make a cozy napping spot for the butterflies.