 | |
We finally got to get outside at work. And, boy howdy, was it ever a
lovely day! 80 degrees & sunny, with just enough of a breeze to keep things
comfortable. Amsinckia grandiflora has begun to flower, but only the
smaller plants. More common relatives such as Amsinckia tessellata are a
little earlier, so they're all in flower. Hence, we were able to identify
most of the plants we had marked so carefully & measured so dutifully as
Amsinckia, but not of the species grandiflora and therefore not of interest. I guess that's why they call Amsinckia grandiflora a 'rare'
plant. Happens every year - we mark all of these plants & about a quarter
of them die before they flower (precluding specific identification) and two
thirds of them end up being the wrong species. And what you are left with
is a very small dataset.
We also went out to check on the poppy population. The poppies we are
monitoring look like California poppies (Eschscholzia californica) but are
much smaller. They are Eschscholzia rhombipetala. They can be 7-10cm
tall, but will flower when they are as small as 2cm. Their flowers are
generally 2-3cm across - a flatter, yellower version of California poppy.
Today when we went out it was still pretty early in the season for E.
rhombipetala, but we found some plants in the leaf stage and a few little
tiny plants with little tiny flowers. We're talking less than 5mm across!
Hard to spot. But there seems like there will be a few plants to measure
once they really start flowering. One year we had only 9 plants. They
occur in an area where the soil is slowly sliding downhill in response to
below-soil-surface drainage patterns (we call it a slump). The soil is
really loose so we don't want to go walking about in the population too
much - miniature landslides occur with every step. So it's better when the
plants are numerous enough to spot: that way we don't have to comb the
entire quarter-acre looking for 9 plants.
My coworker & I have decided we need to bone up on our plant family
identifications. We've both forgotten a lot. There were a couple of
plants flowering today that I had no idea what they were. Back to the
books!
What's flowering in the Central Valley: Indian paintbrush (Castilleja),
owl's clover (Castilleja exserta), miner's lettuce(Claytonia parviflora), Turtlebacks(Monolopia major), Brodiea, wild cucumber (Marah fabaceus. Grasses are beginning to flower, too. Wild oats (Avena) are just starting. I keep my eye on them because they are responsible for my seasonal allergies. I'm glad I don't have to start popping pills quite yet. In the life of trees, willow(Salix) is flowering, and ornamental plums are starting to leaf out so they look less like cotton candy & more like plants. Deciduous oaks(Quercus) are also beginning to leaf: the yellow-green new leaves catch the light & glow in contrast to the very dark bark. Closer to the coast, Magnolias are flowering and walnut trees are beginning to sprout leaves. I was with a friend in a Japanese tea garden & she looked up at a magnolia
tree and said 'this is when California feels like a dream - that flower is
as big as my head and it's March'. 10 years of California living still hasn't gotten the Massachusetts out of that gal. In that garden, Japanese maples (Acer) were unfurling delicately tinted baby-hand-like leaves.
Spring is happening coastside as well. A yellow-orange variety of indian paintbrush (Castilleja ), Footsteps of spring ( Sanicula arctopoides) and buttercups( Ranunculus ) are adding to the yellows of mustard (Brassica rapa) and french broom ( Genista monspessulana ). Seaside daisy ( Erigeron glaucus ) is contributing purply-pink to the hillsides, as is a low-growing mallow, checkerbloom (Sidalcea malvaeflora), I think. I also spied a very small white lupine on a walk on the bluffs this morning. Strawberries ( Fragaria chiloensis ) are flowering and some of the flowers are so huge - I had to look twice to be sure they were really strawberry flowers! Also white, and sometimes purple, wild radish ( Raphanus sativus ) is also flowering. Poison oak ( Toxicadendron diversilobum ) is beginning to leaf out. Previously dead and innocuous-looking twigs are now glistening with light green, oily new leaves. It's creepy, I tell ya. Slopes that looked relatively inviting over the winter now look positively deadly. Possibly the worst part about poison oak leafing out is I am beset with recurring visions of brushing by the stems during the winter and shuddering to think that I could have gotten a case of it(ch).
If you ever want to see pictures of the plants I talk about in these entries, most of them can be found here:
http://elib.cs.berkeley.edu/photos/flora/
previous entry
| | |
