Hiking Edgewood: Linanthus

Linanthus is in bloom in the meadows at Edgewood Nature Preserve

Hiking Windy Hill: Wild Cream Colored Iris

California Native Wildflower - A Creamy Douglassi Iris 

Our California spring wildflowers are blooming like gangbusters at Windy Hill right now. The pooches and kids are enjoying themselves there too. You have to know where to go when you want to hike locally with your dog, and Windy Hill is a great place to take your best friend. Just make sure you choose the trail that's signed for dogs. There are no signs for children, so you can interpret that however you please.

Among the flowers we saw -  red columbine, brilliant blue hounds tongue, milk white hellebore, deep purple lupine, and plenty of pale rosy pink spring vetch in flower on a lovely, warm 7 mile hike yesterday.  I'd never seen the creamy version of douglassi iris I photographed above before. I double checked and found that it does occasionally occur in creamy shades and also hybridizes easily.

Another example of diversity in California!


              

CA Eucalypt in Bloom

These Eucalypts grace the trail to the park in my neighborhood

We moved to California when I was ten.  That's when I first encountered Eucalyptus trees. 

I'd never seen or smelled anything like them. From their papery bark, to their pungent scent I was blown away. And don't get me started on their crazy big, sweet smelling seed pods. We used to string them on heavy thread necklaces using a big darning needle, then find them a few months later, on that shelf or  in that shoebox where we left them,  having burst into fuzzy blooms.

As a kid, I had no idea that eucalyptus was an Australian import, brought to California to provide quick-growing lumber, create wind breaks and green up the native chaparral. Nor did I know that these projects had been a failure from the wood producers point of view. Though eucalypts do grow quickly, the wood they produce doesn't provide a good harvest for many years.

Eucalyptus planting is discouraged in California these days. As a native plant proponent, I can relate to the issues that surround this Australian native. However, I also think a plant that's been here as long as the eucalypts begin to have some rights of their own. And questions remain about whether or not eucalyptus are truly troublesome.

I wasn't born here myself, and yet I feel as local as anybody born in the state. I'm thinking eucalypts have the same rights as any of us newborn natives.

~ ~ ~

Web Resources

http://milliontrees.me/2014/01/14/falling-from-grace-the-history-of-eucalyptus-in-california/

Adenostoma fasciculatum - Looking a little seedy ain't yah?

Please click on the illustration above to fully enjoy this beauty

Adenostoma fasciculatum
Chamise graces the chaparral at Edgewood Park

Mariposa: The Time Travellin' Spud (Hiking Edgewood)

Click on my Jolly Mariposa Lily Illustration Above to Get Up Close and Personal 

With This Native Darling

Mariposa, as I bet you know, is the Spanish word for "butterfly". That was what this beauty's petals, apparently, made some early botanist thing about when they first saw this late spring/early summer flower.

On my morning study break, I took a time travel jaunt back to the middle of the 18'th century. There I found that the native Lamishan (an Ohlone people) think it's equally fanciable as a taste treat.  The group I met up with were digging up the bulbs of this (as we'll as some of the  other local Calochortus). One of the women told me that her cousins up valley usually boil or roast them. Her folks, however, like them fried. The results looked, and tasted, much like what  I do with a friendly spud.

Hillside Gooseberry Setting Fruit (Hiking Edgewood)

Click on the illustration below for the full fruity details

Lizards 'n Lyme (Hiking Edgewood)

(Click on the illustration below to get up close and personal with this Californian's favorite lizard)

As an Edgewood docent I ask others, "Why do you think it's important to preserve nature, beyond beauty, mystery and all that other sensory, emotional stuff?". Of course the answers vary. I've been tempted to go off on my own ideas about increasing over bee-hive health with a diverse plant offering, versus the monoculture imposed by modern agricultural methods, but that's another blog posting all together.

Turns out that the Western Fence Lizards that have been scampering around under my feet like crazy lately (I think it might just be high-hormone mating season for Sceloporus occidentals) is Ma Nature's way of curing Lyme disease. Am I the last to learn this?

Apparently in California, where these lizards abound, the deer ticks that transmit Lyme disease bacteria loose their Lyme-oomph when they bite the lizards. This article from the CA Academy of Sciences explains it all. I've been told, but cannot find a reference on the web, that the result is, that only about 1-2% of deer tick bites where Western Fence Lizards roam produce Lyme disease in humans, versus the over 80% in other parts of the country. Don't quote me on that, however, since I can't find a source for you.

Wikipedia also has an article about this Lyme-disease link.

An Edgewood Promise

California Once Upon a Time: Purple Needlegrass

It's not only people we want to travel back in time to hang out with. I'm planning a little time travel jaunt, back to the days when bunch grasses like this grew all over California......


 Click on the illustration below for maximum viewing pleasure

Once upon a time the California bunch grasses, like this purple needle grass, flourished along with masses of spring wildflowers. With the invasion of Europeans and European grasses in the mid-eighteenth century most of our grasses and wildflower meadows began to look like some other continent.

This purple needle grass continues to grow in Edgewood Preserve, because it grows on serpentine soil (1% of California has serpentine soil, 10% of the entire planet) and also because of determined Weed Warriors who work in the park to eliminate invasive plants and improve the habitat for native wildflowers and grasses.

California Dreamin' Poppies and Red Maids at Edgewood Park

My top priority is hiking Edgewood Park as often as possible. 

My second priority is homework. 

Today it was CA poppies and Red Maids putting on a show.

Olive Another My Dear

It turns out that the public community 

Cañada College, where I take my programming classes and native plants class* was built on the site of an old olive ranch. Ain't that just so terribly historical California like? Golly how romantic, unless mebbe the workers were getting the shaft. Let's hope not... then we can peruse the romantic images. 

* That's the one to give me a break from the programming classes except that there's a bunch of home time stuff I want to do now for that too. And yes there are about 6 hours of in class time/week, so it's not just about heading in for a party amongst the manzanita once a week

Checker Mallow

I'm taking the California Native Plants class this semester along with two tough programming classes. Next week I also start docent training at Edgewood County Park, where I photographed this Checker Mallow, to become a wildflower docent.

Once more let's shout Hooray! for the people who came before us and set aside green spaces in urban areas.

Ohlone Autumn

Ohlone Autumn

Edgewood Park, San Mateo County, CA

Click on the illustration to enlarge.

Every time I'm sure I know what's ahead of me on the path, I get surprised.  

Like a Shooting Star

Have you met this California Native?

Mountain Laurel: Romancin' my Namesake

Please click on the illustration above 

to fully enjoy the romantic details

You might not think I'm descended from a line of romantics, as down-to-earth as my parents are, unless you happen to know that I was named after the Mountain Laurel of the Pacific Cascades. 

Baylands: Believing

Please, click on the illustration above 
to enjoy the really glorious detail

Baylands: Believing

It took a lot of people believing that marshlands were vital to the future of a good many people and animals, for this area to be set aside. It took a lot of people pushing, talking and, maybe even shouting down other people. From the birds point of view,  it's the difference between a place to settle for a few days, eat up and rest, and flying on in desperation. When you eat like a bird, that's the difference between survival and raising your family and not making it.


Today I vote for believing mixed with a heavy dose of being pushy. 

* * * 

History of the Baylands Nature Preserve (Palo Alto City site)

A few other illustrated Baylands Bites from this journal have included:

Baylands Bounty

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2011

Some of us have to really put our heart into searching for supper.

Baylands: Sarcocornia pacifica recovering from overindulgence

Jan 11, 2011 

I’m partial to a pickle myself. S. pacifica likes that salty taste even more than I do. 

A Baylands Bouquet

Jan 02, 2011

California buckwheat,. Eriogonum fasciculatum var. foliolosum. Please click on the picture above to immerse yourself in the detail of this lovely buckwheat bouquet. What's so great about the. BaylandsNature Preserve? ...

Baylands is for the birds

Jan 09, 2011

I think this gentleman is trying to nerve himself up to go in. I'm like that about lake swimming. I know you're supposed to be tough and jump right in, but....

A Taste for Tidal Salt

Jan 03, 2011

Pretty delicious, particularly if your name is Pickle Weed, Cord Grass or Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse. You may also enjoy A BaylandsBouquet. ... to enjoy this really salty repast.

Baylands: Sarcocornia pacifica recovering from overindulgence

Pickleweed, S.pacifica, Palo Alto Baylands, San Francisco Bay, CA

Please CLICK ON THE PICTURE ABOVE 
to take in a fuller view of the beauteous pickleweed in her dormant winter clothes

I've included other pieces and pictures in my January Art Journal, from a recent walk at the Palo Alto Baylands at the edge of the San Francisco Bay. They include: A Baylands Bouquet, Baylands is for the Birds,  A Taste for Tidal Salt

A few days back I wrote in this journal about how exotic I found the San Francisco Bay marshlands when I first located here in the late ‘seventies. Pickleweed is one of the things that gives our bayland zone it’s distinctive look.

I’m partial to a pickle myself. S. pacifica likes that salty taste even more than I do. In fact, she relies on it to keep her roots happy. She filters that salt out as it reaches her upper limbs, but after a while she just over-salts. Too much of a good thing, I guess. Then even her fleshy little tips looses their oomph and drop off.  That happens in the winter, as you can see in my recent photo.

She’s a perennial plant so recovery, not death, is in order. Does this sound familiar after a month where a body may have overindulged just a tad?

I’m rather partial to the pickleweed’s colorful, dormant winter look.

A Taste for Tidal Salt

Ummmm, yummmm the taste of tidal salt.

Pretty delicious, particularly if your name is Pickle Weed, Cord Grass or Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse.

You may also enjoy A Baylands Bouquet

Go ahead and click on the picture to enjoy this really salty repast.

A Baylands Bouquet

California buckwheat,

Eriogonum fasciculatum var. foliolosum

Please click on the picture above to immerse yourself in the detail of this lovely buckwheat bouquet

What's so great about the

Baylands Nature Preserve?

• I never saw anything like it before I moved to the Bay Area in 1978. Open, flat views of water, mud, birds and pickleweed gave me a new vision of what romantic meant.
• Though we often drive out to walk the trails, it’s possible to get there on my around-town cruiser bike.
• Birds have priority over people, or as it says on their web site “A substantial resident population of birds as well as being a major migratory stopover on the Pacific Flyway”

I've seen Marsh Hawks, Great and common Egrets and Great Blue Herons many times. And I'm not even a birder out looking for them. Of course there are tons of common shore birds: seagulls, ducks, godwits, willets, curlews, coots and sandpipers.

• Sometimes I get out there and there’s nobody on the expanse of trail but me, but I feel safe because it’s so wide open and people can see me from a distance. So I can sing REALLY LOUDLY

First Signs of Fall: Forage 'Ye Fennel Will Ye May

Been eyeing this lovely spot of wild fennel by the edge of the train tracks on my walking route back from the Atherton Library, for a month or more now. I know Californians who forage for this floral treat. The bulb, seeds, flowers and pollen are all fodder for the native gourmet's kitchen. I'm not ready to take the chance on roadside produce. The creek below is sprayed for mosquito larve and there's also the potential that some other, toxic, little plant might creep in with the greenery. I'm better off sticking with the Sunday Farmer's Market downtown.

But I haven't found that sharp anise scent at the agricultural stalls. Last summer I cropped a big bunch and brought it home for a bouquet, which I plumped down outside in a big old aluminum watering pot, a la "Country Living Magazine". My husband, a much more orderly person than I am, was seriously displeased. It was a sticky, messy visitor, and he traded me some favor (not dishes - he already does a good deal of the housework around here!) to get me to pitch the pots contents after a couple of days on our outdoor supper table on the patio.

But this year I'd spied it again. Just as yellow and just as strong-scented. Ever since I first spotted it, I'd been considering the possibility of a bouquet to decorate the driveway. I was returning a stack of well-read books two days ago, when I saw the road crew pull up with shovels and rakes.

"Are you going take out the yellow flowers?" I cried.

They admitted the 'yellow flowers' were indeed their goal. When I returned with my camera in hand, fifteen minutes later, they'd already made inroads on my photo-bouquet. While I snapped my pictures, they were already bundling the branches into shocks, and leaning them against the metal fence for the guy with the truck. Meanwhile the seeds rained down on the heavy, adobe soil.

The fennel, in all it's strong-scented, sticky, yellow glory will be back next summer.

Take a better peek at this altered mass of yellow glory, by clicking on the picture above. If you're a regular reader of this journal, you might recognize some of the visitors I've added.