California Poppies

The Definition of Understatement

Lately I've been reading a biography of the 19th century botanist David Douglas. The chapter I just finished had him landed in various dire circumstances while searching for specimens of the Sugar Pine. From Douglas' own journal comes this catalogue of unpleasantnesses which one (especially one traveling by horseback) might encounter in an Oregon November:

All hungry and no means of cooking a little of our stock; traveled thirty three miles, drenched and bleached with rain or sleet, chilled with a piercing north wind; and then to finish the day experienced the cooling, comfortless consolation for lying down wet without supper or fire. On such occasions I am very liable to become fretful.

High Country

A band gig Sunday landed upon me the happy obligation to drive up Highway 89. To add to the utter perfection of the day, I had my mp3 player plugged into the stereo system, and just about the time I hit the bit of the drive in the picture below, a piper filed somewhere in the depths of my machine struck into a magnificent rendition of "Scarce of Fishing." Probably, on reflection, that isn't the most accurate musical tribute that might be paid to the area that contains various bits of the Feather River, the Yuba River, and I couldn't tell you how many smaller streams. . .but the crunluath a machs were eloquent.
The highway is just one lane in each direction, but it is situated cunningly, with a generous trimming of pullouts, and each pullout has a view, be it expansive and scenic, or quite concentrated and floral. Below are some guesses at some of the floral bits. The faunal should follow in the next couple of days.

Brodiaea hyacinthina?

Calyptridium monospermum?

Sarcodes sanguinea, or Snow Plant. This was truly weird and wonderful, and I had no idea what it was when I saw it. It looked rather alien, like a cross between a flower and a mushroom. There is, come to find out, a good reason for that. Although it's considered part of the heather family (Ericaceae), it doesn't process its nutrition in the expected floral fashion (i.e. chlorophyll); instead, it takes its sustinence directly from a type of fungus that grows on pine roots. Yes, really.

Here's more on heterotrophic flora. Worth a gander: it's really quite fascinating.

Yellow, definitely. In Fabaceae, I think.

Ergonium umbellatum, Sulphur buckwheat.

Something in the Cryptantha genus, but what?

And, something in the Castilleja (Indian paintbrush) genus.

Balsamorhiza, maybe?

Collomia grandiflora. The common name isn't much help. It's "grand collomia."

And a flock of Aquilegia formosa, Western columbine.

The Bonnie, Bonnie Bugs

I've had broom much on the brain of late. I have not been pondering its vicious invasive habits, or even taking the trouble to find out whether I am looking at the Scotch, or the Spanish, or at some other variety. There is just a good deal of it around here, so much so, that you can't help but notice it--so much so, indeed, that the perusal of a poem collection the other night turned up, at its first opened page something Stevenson was saying about bonnie broom. I don't know why broom absolutely must be bonnie, but the laws of poetry seem to dictate that you cannot mention that particular noun without that particular adjective. Do you think I exaggerate? Then possibly you never heard of the bonnie, bonnie (two of 'em! Count 'em!) broom of the Cowdenknowes? The poets do have a point, I'll admit. It is: At least it was growing along Sunrise Boulevard in a bonnie enough fashion to make me drive over to the American River Parkway on Sunday to see if I could get a decent picture of it. Well, to be honest, a good deal of the "bonnie" award goes to the big fried eggs of matilaja poppies that were growing among it, high on the bank, and I couldn't get anything like a picture that did the panorama justice:

Though the river was fair enough,

And so were the wild grapevines which seemed obligated to grow all over every inch of space that didn't already have something growing in it. . .and a few that did.

But the real pay-off, that more than made up for any disappointment over broom that insisted on being bonnie from a distance was this. Or rather these. There were herds of them:
And can you guess what this faboulous and fearsome beast is? It is the oh-so-thankfully flightless young of my old nemesis the Pipevine Swallowtail.
You didn't even have to look for the little fellows--they were everywhere. Well, yes, for starters, everywhere there was a handy pipevine, but also taking their evening strolls among other foliage, or even, in one case, across the road.
Fabre once complained: "The fashion is all for the Mollusc and the Zoophyte. The depths of the sea are explored with many drag-nets; the soil which we tread is consistently disregarded." Mind, I can't point any fingers when it comes to a fondness for the Mollusc, but there are certainly some wonderfully bizarre creatures quite close at hand.

A Sticky Business

I am, despite the apparent contradiction implied by the appearance of a post, internetless at the moment. Which means I was at the library yesterday, waiting for my turn on the computer, which meant I took the opportunity to check out a great armload of books, which I shall probably never read, which means I did sit down and look at the one with all the pictures in it, which means (at last) that I can bring you this fact, which I found quite startling: there is a cactus peculiar to--Bakersfield. It is, with the characteristic direct address of Kern County, called the Bakersfield cactus, or, more obscurely, Opuntia treleasii. And this is what it looks like. So now you know--don't ever ask me again.

Breckenridge

Here are a couple of snaps from a week ago Monday, when I had the fortune of driving down, at long last, Highway 58. The mountain, unless I have grown terribly discombobulated from a long absence, is Breckenridge; the wild currants in the foreground, even if they are not quite in bloom, have an incomparably spicy smell. That is to say, one can't properly compare them to anything except wild currants, and any decent soul would wish every other living being in the world a chance to smell the same on a bright, late-winter morning. The fiddlenecks, something not over-far from Amsinckia menziesii, were flourishing, but not quite in bloom at the same location.

Matilija Poppies

Calflora has just about everything you might want to know about this native shrub.

Latest Find

Yesterday's drive to see my piping instructor proved just a little too productive; I was on my way home, my mind sufficiently engaged with proposed improvements for my strathspey,when dusk fell and I started to become aware of the surroundings, including new and different wild lilies. The picture above doesn't capture the light, whispy effect of the flower. Seen in the dusk, they were as ephemeral as wind-combed clouds, the stems seeming more of an afterthought than a necessity.
From the description in Growing California Native Plants, I think this is Chlorogalum pomeridianum (soap plant). If that is correct, perhaps I needn't be so surprised that I only noticed the flowers on my way back from the lesson--according to the Pacific Bulb Society website the delicate, short-lived blossoms only appear in the evening.

And now, about that strathspey. . .

This Side of Spring

Purplish flowers were all the latest rage down at the American River yesterday. There were thistles in great quantities, a circumstance which seemed to please the bees to no end. In fact, it would have been worthwhile to spend an hour at the first growth of thistles I came upon; ever turn of leaf or flower seemed to be claimed by a different creature. Inevitably, there were many more bugs than there were good shots to prove it, but the focus held on this katydid nymph.
Wide, sunny spaces that had been green only last month were burned a dull brown and glutted with fluffy white parachutes of aster seeds. It was all the more startling, in such a wilderness, to come upon sharp strokes of colour effected by dwarf brodiaea (Brodiaea terrestris).

The predominant family in the park was definitely Fabaceae; the clearings that still had some life in them were thick with small lupins, and especially vetch.

For every plant I could more-or-less identify, there were at least two that I couldn't, so if any of you might give me a lead on any of the following, it would be muchly appreciated! The long, square stems of this one could reach the five-foot mark.

It isn't entirely the fault of a bad exposure that the plant below doesn't look too purple; it was only very faintly coloured in real life as well. (Note the almost-in-focus pipevine swallowtail on the top cluster of flowers!. . .Alas, only "almost.")

And yes, this one is stretching the "purple" label a bit, but I thought it was pretty nifty. Is it a showy native, or a showy escapee from a local garden?

[EDIT: 07/05/2011 It's a native, definitely Clarkia. Unless told otherwise, I'm going to assume it's Clarkia ungiculata.]

By the Margin of the River

Here's something I found at the American River last weekend. I can find nothing that resembles the flowers so much as American brooklime (Veronica beccabunga), which, despite the common name, is an invasive plant from Europe, but the placement of the flowers seems much closer to the main stem than in the examples of American brooklime I've seen so far. Any ideas?

Catching Up With Spring

Here's a short round of pictures I came upon in an empty lot on my way home from work a few weeks ago. I was rather excited to run across the location as it meant I could butcher the reels from my band's medley in relative privacy, and yet not be so far off the beaten path as to set myself up for a mugging. After bludgeoning the reels into whimpering oblivion (i.e. when my lip was starting to give) I had a chance to look around, and found a flower I was unfamiliar with. If my identification is correct, these are Red Maids (Calandrinia ciliata).

Safari

Yesterday morning I went down to the Effie Yeaw Nature Center to see a presentation on insects. I had a pretty good idea that it was going to be aimed at people much younger than myself (and I was right), but I hoped I might thereby get a gentle introduction to the local bugs. It would have been worth going anyway just to hear the questions the people much younger than myself were asking: "Does a bug see like us?" asked a small person, who had just had compound eyes explained to her, "Or does it see the same thing lots of times?"

After the presentation the group was lead on a short walk around the nature center to see what we could see. A tiny child, with a fluff of fine blonde hair that made her look rather as though a hearty wind could blow her away like a milkweed seed, spotted the first bug--really a bug, I mean, something like this one, but after that, the pickings were rather slim. The naturalist in charge had thought ahead in case of such an emergency and knew where we were likely to find a few galls. Here are some on a black walnut leaf.Yes, they are a bit freakish, especially when you stop to consider that they are made from cells of the leaf itself. I'm not sure what sort of critter was responsible for these; it may have been a mite.

The oaks were becoming a bit of a neighborhood. Whose neighborhood, again I can't say.

Off the subject of galls altogether, a plant which the naturalist pointed out in particular was the Dutchman's Pipe Vine. Here is a specimen from the hands-on exhibit inside the nature center.

It's not blooming season now, so the real live Dutchman's Pipe Vine lacks those fantastically shaped flowers.

The plant was pointed out because of its status as the host plant of a very picky eater, the Pipevine Swallowtail.

After the presentation was over, I went a-hunting through the wilds of the American River Parkway. It was a glorious place, full of sun (okay, I don't like it, but the bugs seem to) and trees and deep grass and all things fine. Fabre would have loved it. Then again, possibly even Fabre would have been driven out of his mind, because of The Rule: you are kindly reminded to stay on the paths, please, thank you very much.

This is a logical rule, since it is not an enormous park, and, judging from the number of visitors in there today, could be walked right down to nothing in short order. But the pipevine swallowtails take heartless advantage of it. You might think that they have plenty of space to go on living their little butterfly lives, off in secluded nooks. Perhaps they do live that way, but if so, they like, at least, to take an extended lunch hour (which probably lasts all day) and spend it perched on the flowers nearest the paths. They're clever about it, gracefully lazy, opening their wings up to just the right angle so the naive photographer thinks, "Man, that pose couldn't be more perfect if I set it up myself. . .now if you'll just wait for me to turn on the camera. . ." The butterfly watches out of slitted compound eyes as the camera comes up. It stretches drowsily, and examines its fingernails, and then, in the millisecond just before the shutter closes, it takes to the air and begins to do an interpretive dance to "Flight of the Bumblebee."

"And it was such a perfect picture," the photographer sighs. But wait! The miniature cyclone is settling down over the flower it just left. Down, down. . .and the camera is following. . .down, and--vrooom! the butterfly, was just doing a low fly-by, and accelerates into the centre of the patch of star thistles where it once again becomes a delicate, picturesque insect, meandering from flower to flower well out of the reach of the macro lens. Of course, the photographer feels cheated if she doesn't get some sort of shot, so she switches to a longer range setting and presses the shutter in a state of panic. The results are not particularly stellar:

That is a pipevine swallowtail's favorite trick, but it has others. Occasionally it tires of waiting on a flower and looking picturesque, and it takes off while you are still fifty feet away. It flies towards you. To optimize the effect, it usually calls one of its friends over and they hold a mock-dogfight right over your head. If you even think about the camera, they part company and fly up into the highest, darkest branches of the nearest oak.

Another popular move is the quail imitation. With any other butterfly I would lay the phenomenon to my own clumsiness, but judging from its other habits, I must give the credit entirely to the pipevine swallowtail. It lurks unseen in the grass at the border of the path, and then, just as you come within what would have been excellent macro range, it takes to frantic and almost vertical flight. I did not see that it had yet perfected the skill to a point where it had gathered a covey of other butterflies for the maximum effect, but it is an impressive start. The finish is, as above, in whichever patch of flowers contributes to the most impossible camera angle.

With the aforementioned methods, combined with its uncanny ability to gauge the difference between too far away (which can be shrugged off) and just too far away (which is excruciating for the photographer) when landing, one insect can keep a human occupied indefinitely. (It helps, of course, if the human is is unused to thinking of insects as sly, manipulative creatures.) Add to that the fact that there were dozens of swallowtails in the park. . .and the result is more than enough pictures like this one which fall into the Loch-Ness-Monster-could-be-just-about-anything category of photos:

("See, I told you I got a picture of a pipevine swallowtail!"

"That's not a pipevine swallowtail! Nobody gets pictures of The Pipevine Swallowtail. It's a hummingbird. . .maybe. Or a bat."

"No, really! I was looking at the flower, and it was there, and--"

"Enough of your tall stories! Clean that smudge off your lense and go chase a ground beetle! And stay on the path!")

I did make one very interesting discovery:butterflies laugh. And it sounds like this: "Mwahahahaha!"