SIGNS OF SPRING\Opening day nears for poppy reserve\Full blooms not expected 'til April because of cool weather in\February.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Daily News Staff Writer

The Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve will open its visitors center Saturday, but don't expect to see many blooms.

Cool weather in late February slowed the growth of the wildflowers, so rangers don't expect the poppies to be in full bloom until mid-April.

"There are a lot of little baby plants, but it's going to take a lot of warm weather to get them going," said Mary Lou MacKenzie, a state park interpretive specialist. "It's still a little too early to tell - we certainly hope for a good year."

Starting Saturday, the visitors center at the 1,700-acre reserve at 15101 W. Lancaster Road will be open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekends. The reserve can be reached by driving west on Avenue I, and is about 15 miles from the Antelope Valley Freeway.

Admission is free, although parking costs $5 a car, or $4 for any vehicle containing a senior citizen.

The reserve itself will have a slightly different look than in seasons past, with a refurbished visitors center and a widened entrance road.

The visitors center includes an enlarged gift shop and a new display area containing a computer on which visitors can call up color photographs of some 120 varieties of wildflowers common to the area.

Rangers hope the widened, two-lane entrance road will cut down on the congestion that plagued visitors and staff last wildflower season. It was one of the longest on record, and certainly the busiest, with 123,000 visitors from March through May.

Park workers also have created a new trail leading from the picnic area at the parking lot to the nearest butte, to serve the same sort of visitors who last year created their own path straight up the butte. The improvised thoroughfare caused erosion, officials said.

Because so many factors influence the growth and survival of wildflowers - rain, temperature, cloud cover - rangers and wildflower experts aren't sure how this spring's flower display will shape up.

One theory held that the valley's wildflowers need fall and spring rains, said Milt Stark, author of "A Flower Watcher's Guide" about Antelope Valley wildflowers.

That was disproved, he said, by spring 1991.

A very dry fall, a relatively dry winter and a deluge in March resulted in a wildflower season described as the best in decades, covering west valley hillsides with orange and yellow blossoms. Possibly a part of the reason for the flamboyant bloom was the intensely cold weather in December 1990, dubbed the "Arctic Express," which burst water pipes all over the valley.

Last year, Easter Sunday snow helped the blossoms persist for weeks.

How this year's mix of weather will affect the flowers is anybody's guess.

Although this February was cool and cloudy, the winter overall has been mild, with no frost until Dec. 16, Stark said. About 7 inches of rain has fallen at the reserve this year, compared with 12 to 15 inches last year, MacKenzie said.

"There could be a lot of things happen between now and April," Stark said.

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PHOTO

Photo (1--color in AV edition only) Maintenance chief Bill Verdery removes a barbed-wire fence in preparation for Saturday's opening of the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve. (2--ran in AV only--color) Poppies were starting to bloom Monday, but they won't be in full bloom until mid-April because of February's cool spell, officials said. Shaun Dyer/Special to the Daily News