Agave americana - In Bud

Agave Americana

in Bud

Stanford University - AZ Gardens

Wildflowers: Lupines at Stanford University

Lupines

Stanford University is famous for it's educational resources, and Silicon Valley connections.Though less discussed,  it's also home to  some of my favorite native trees and flowers.

CA Wildflowers: How 'Bout them Blue Eyes?

Nemophila menziesii
Baby Blue Eyes

Stanford University is famous for it's educational resources, and Silicon Valley connections.Though less discussed,  it's also home to  some of my favorite native trees and flowers.

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

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.