The top five, I might mention, are all so glorious, it was really more of that silliness trying to put them in any specific order...
5. Antelope Poppy Preserve, CA., in the spring. Again, rainfall is very important to this area. Some years there are few flowers; the year we were there, there had been sufficient winter moisture. The consequence was thousands of acres of California Poppies, Goldfields, lupine species, Bigelow's Coreopsis, phacelia species, and stuff I never got close enough to identify, but got to enjoy the colors just the same. When I first laid eyes on this, it brought tears to my eyes.
4. Paradise Meadows, Mt. Rainier National Park, WA. Mt. Dana, back at Yosemite, might have been my first true mountain meadow, and grand as it was, it was a window box of flowers compared to this place. This was breathtaking; meadows full of Magenta Paintbrush and several varieties of lousewort and Sitka Valerian and the hairy fruit of Pasqueflower and Pink Mountain Heather and Rosy Spirea and Subalpine Lupine, with glacier-clad Mt. Rainier towering over it all. Flowers were blossoming ten feet from the snowline in early August.
3. Hurricane Ridge, Olympic National Park, WA. Though we caught the tail end of the early sprig bloomers ... still some patches of Glacier Lilies ... there was plenty of early summer stuff. It was yet another orgy of botany, up along Hurricane Ridge, but some of the very best sights were along the road up to the parking area, particularly the last mile or two. There were lupines and owl's covers and larkspurs galore, as well as White and Green Bog Orchids and Elephant's Head and Columbia Tiger Lilies, but it was the paintbrushes that were the real spectacle. The hillside dropping down from the road was a thick, woolly blanket of orange and red paintbrush. It was a wildfire of wildflowers. It hurt the eyes it was so bright and beautiful.
2. Mary's Peak, OR. It was another June-blooming mountainside awash in varieties of penstemon and lupine and larkspur and paintbrush and more. And unlike many of the other mountain meadows, this one was not strenuous at all, and you could wander the trails in among this small yet magnificent explosion of color. It was gorgeous.
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