fiesta flower ~ 11/18/14 ~ Pinnacles

fiesta flower

wedding tree ~ 04/06/14 ~ Garland Ranch

wedding tree
California white oak / valley oak
Quercus lobata
Fagaceae

I think it's cool that Andy and I have made it a tradition to hike to our wedding tree on or around our anniversary.  It's not like we don't visit any other time of year, e.g., last November when it was dry, dry, dry or in February before the leaves come out.  It's been particularly interesting to look at my photos of this tree on an annual basis, showing variations in the timing of spring leaf-out and subtler, annual changes as the tree ages, not to mention the weather (it snowed on us in 2011!).  This year, the leaves were fairly progressed; some had already toughened up and were very shiny like typical summer leaves.  The last time it was anywhere near this leafy on our anniversary was back in 2010 when the catkins were still hanging on.  I don't know what's going on with the swath of no leaves in the last photo.  There's a patch of lace lichen there that hasn't spread much over the years, and supposedly it doesn't hurt the tree.  Also, notice how much greener the grass is in the shade of the tree versus out on the sunny hilltop?  What's that phenomena called?  It's as if mature oaks create their own personal water cache through their own shade.  Since we share this tree with other visitors to Garland, we also take note when other people leave their mark, in this case, a heart painted with... chocolate and vanilla pudding?  Cheers!

stream violet ~ 03/03/14 ~ Purisima Creek

stream violet

Viola glabella

Violaceae

redwood violet

Viola sempervirens

Violaceae

If Ken hadn't pointed out the subtle differences in leaf shape, I would not have known there were 2 different violet spp. here.  I often make the mistake of assuming look-alikes in the same location are, in fact, the same.  Nope.  I believe I got the above sorted correctly with the stream violet having the pointier leaf shape and the redwood violet being more rounded.  Right, Ken?  I find it interesting how the leaves handle water.  Those droplets on the leaf margins are intriguing.

ps 03/10/14 - Per my comments below, I wonder if the "pointy" lower petal of the stream violet, similarly shaped to the leaves, can be considered diagnostic.  Ken has a stunning redwood violet photo in bloom.

fiesta flower ~ 02/25/14 ~ Pinnacles

fiesta flower

coast live oak ~ 02/22/14 ~ Fort Ord

coast live oak / California live oak

Quercus agrifolia var. agrifolia

Fagaceae

I don't know why I keep getting tripped up on coast live oaks, as is evidenced by my past posts March 20, 2011 and March 11, 2012.  In the comments section, Cindy @ Dipper Ranch has provided quick tips on oaks, but my mental block around trees keeps me from remembering most of it.  I now know to look for "underarm hair" on the underside of leaves.  It seems to me that our CA native oaks have a greater degree of variation within spp. than between spp.  Every time I think I've found a different sp. of evergreen oak, it ends up being a coast live oak.  Ugh.  These two sets of photos are two trees growing about 20 feet apart.

Quercus agrifolia var. agrifolia?

Underarm hair?  Check.  But, look how smooth the trunk is, akin to how smooth the leaves are with very few points on the leaf margin.  I know the number of points can be variable, but the trunk, too?  Can anyone confirm for me that this is coast live oak?  Cindy?

For my future reference, and maybe yours, too:
California Oak Identification @ University of California Hastings Reserve
California Native Oaks @ Las Pilitas Nursery 
Oak Identification @ University of California Cooperative Extension, Marin County

Lorquin's admiral ~ 05/31/13 ~ Hatton Canyon

Lorquin's admiral perched on western dogwood

Limenitis lorquini perched on Cornus sericea ssp. occidentalis

for more information, click here and here

Lorquin's lacks the black.  Lorquin's lacks the black.  Lorquin's lacks the black.  I made up this mnemonic a couple years ago when I was trying to remember the difference between these admiral butterflies and the very similar looking California sister.  I've repeated it constantly.  Still, it hasn't really helped me differentiate Lorquin's when they're quickly flying past, so this is my first confirmed sighting.  I'm fairly sure I've seen Lorquin's before but usually guess they're the more common CA sister.  The lacking the black refers to the orange going all the way to the wing tips, without a thick dark border as is found on CA sisters.  Both butterflies tend to be in flight at the same time, too. Apparently, Lorquin's are Batesian mimics of the CA sister.

Yadon's piperia ~ 04/18/13 ~ Huckleberry Hill

 Yadon's rein orchid
Piperia yadonii
CNPS 8th Edition Inventory
Orchidaceae

posted 05/23/13 - "Please watch your step. Those are Yadon's you're treading on."  So said my veteran CNPS guide. Really!?!  I've only ever noticed these when they're blooming in late July and early August and the leaves are completely gone.  I had no idea when the leaves were actually out; they look just like the exotic orchids I have as houseplants.  Once again, I'm noting this location is not Monterey City's Huckleberry Hill Nature Preserve where I first saw Yadon's.

wedding tree ~ 04/07/13 ~ Garland Ranch

 wedding tree
California white oak / valley oak
Quercus lobata
Fagaceae

Hey yo, long time, no?  Has it really been almost 4 months since I last posted to Nature ID?  It's interesting how time seems to become more condensed as I get older.  No offense to anyone but I have a theory as to why elderly folk drive so slow, if an hour feels like half an hour, then going 30 miles per hour feels more like 60 miles per hour.  Whoa.  Time and the unspoken commitments we all make to each other have been looming large in my brain space lately.  I had meant for Nature ID to chronicle nature.  Now I realize it's helped me chronicle the seasons of my life... and I miss the act of recording.  Anniversary.  We did our annual hike a day early with concerns over having enough daylight after school and the possibility that I might be traveling. Imagine our surprise when we found our wedding tree trail closed for rehabilitation.  Fortunately other trails to the tree remain open for now.

wedding tree ~ 04/08/12 ~ Garland Ranch

wedding tree
California white oak / valley oak
Quercus lobata
Fagaceae

How often will our wedding anniversary land on Easter? While extending our regrets for leaving the Highlands shin-dig early, a sentimental fellow best known as "Boo" suggested we take Easter egg offerings for our wedding tree. That's exactly what we did! Once the kids' egg and adults' beer hunts were finished, we found cracked eggs we liked and wrapped them up for our hike up to the mesa. It was great fun selecting our own hiding spots on our tree. Notice the ant on mine? Many ants came to check it out. Andy hid his high in a nook. The vernal greenery on this deciduous oak was notably varied this year with clusters of tight buds to soft unfurled leaves. Click to see this tree on April 8 in 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011.

ps 04/12/12 - I looked for fairy fingers and could not find them.

oak ~ 03/11/12 ~ Pogonip

unidentified oak
Quercus sp.
Fagaceae

I need help (heh, probably in more ways than one) for this ID. Unfortunately, since this is a city park in Santa Cruz and it's beyond the range of my usual double-check option of our local CNPS Montery Chapter plant lists, I resorted to Calflora's What Grows Here. There are three species recorded for this area: coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia), Santa Cruz island oak/Shreve oak (Quercus parvula), and interior live oak (Quercus wislizeni). We have a coast live oak tree at the end of our driveway, and I feel I'm now very familiar with this tree; it has new fresh green spring growth but nothing like the pretty pink flower-like sprouts as shown above. If anyone can help ID this oak tree for me, I'd be very appreciative.

black sage ~ 03/03/12 ~ Jacks Peak

black sage
Salvia mellifera
Lamiaceae

Ever since my Doh! moment of finding junipers on Juniper Canyon Trail at Pinnacles, I realized I could pay better attention to the names of trails and why they might be named that. So, when I headed down Sage Trail, I kept my eye out for sages. This is a new ID for Nature ID. Black sage is found at all my favorite hiking haunts, but I have never bothered to take note of it before. Two sites that have great information about sages in CA, are Las Pilitas Nursery (I especially like the section titled "Other stinky things that are also called sages but are not.") and Wayne's Word (He starts off with a cursory review of sages around the world and ends up in CA.).

Does anyone know if black sage leaves can be used in cooking? One of my favorite sauces to make is crispy sage with browned butter. I grow garden sage in the windowsill just for this purpose.

wavyleaf soap plant ~ 12/25/11 ~ Jacks Peak

wavyleaf soap plant
Chlorogalum pomeridianum var. pomeridianum
Asparagaceae (formerly Agavaceae, Hyacinthaceae, & Liliaceae)

Edited 01/03/12 - I originally posted this as a sprout of Fremont's star-lily, but thanks to my commenters, I've corrected the ID above. It's been a goal of mine to track the seasonal evidence of both death camas, aka Fremont's star-lily, and soap plant, especially in areas where they literally grow from the same spot of ground like at Jacks Peak. I've made a fuss about how several online sites have them mixed up, and I've admitted I get them confused, too, when they only have green leaves - the flowers are too distinctive to ever get them mixed up. I've now concluded that death camas is an early flowerer compared to 3-4 months later in the season soap plant.

stinging lupine ~ 12/10/11 ~ Los Padres Dam

stinging lupine
Lupinus hirsutissimus
Fabaceae

My brain has totally taken a holiday. When I'm usually working on this blog early in the morning, it's now dark out, and I've been feeling like I would rather be back in bed. But, that's just a lame excuse... For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what this plant was and posted it on Flickr seeking ID help. Doh! I should have known it was a lupine of some sort based on the leaf shape, yet I was more focused on the prickly parts. True to its name, they do give a mild sting when touched, like a poke with a small needle that stays stuck. Andy and I both discovered this when we took a closer look and feel of the plant. While I suspect this plant would normally grow where I found it, Wikipedia states these grow in places that were recently burned. I wonder how much the 2008 Basin Complex Fire on this trail encouraged the presence of this particular patch of stinging lupine.

common yarrow ~ 12/10/11 ~ Los Padres Dam

common yarrow
Achillea millefolium
Asteraceae

posted 12/29/11 - When I started this blog 2 1/2 years ago, I focused on colorful, sunny flowers and animals that were already familiar to me. It's been a real joy learning more about my local natural world. My learning curve was a sharp incline at first and then it flattened out, partially due to blogging fatigue and partially due to my hesitancy to show off how much I don't know.

Without flowers, I'm often at a loss as to what a plant is. It's time for me to start looking at leaves. Once again, thanks to Flickr and Nature of a Man blogger randomtruth, I received help for the ID of this very common plant.

The white blooms in the last picture might be a type of naked buckwheat (Eriogonum nudum), but really I have no idea. I had several pictures of this buckwheat, but none of them turned out very well since my point-and-shoot couldn't find a focal point. Once again, I should have looked for the leaves to be able to make a better determination.

bigleaf maple and CA sycamore ~ 11/19/11 ~ Garland Ranch

bigleaf maple (left) and California sycamore (right)

Both these deciduous trees are native to California and provide lovely autumn colors. They can be quite tall, so it's difficult to compare the shapes of the leaves when they're too high to examine. It's taken me until this hike, when the forest floor is littered, to truly distinguish the leaves. For the longest time, I thought Garland only had one native large-leaved tree, that being the bigleaf maple. I was wrong. Considering the place used to be a ranch, I figured any sycamores I found were non-native. I've corrected past posts to reflect my new understanding, like last November's Garzas Creek habitat post.

bigleaf maple
Acer macrophyllum
Sapindaceae (formerly Aceraceae)

Notice the 5 deep lobes of the leaf? The vertically grooved bark, often covered in moss or lichen, reminds me very much of walnut trees. Other eastern North American counterparts are red maple (Acer rubrum), silver maple (Acer saccharinum), and sugar maple (Acer saccharum). Despite what the USDA PLANTS database shows, the silver maple is not native to CA.

western sycamore / California sycamore
Platanus racemosa
Platanaceae

What originally confused me about the leaves is the CA sycamore's can have 3 or 5 lobes. I can usually recognize sycamore bark by its sickly, puzzle-like look - yep, that's my own highly technical description. Its eastern North American counterpart is American sycamore (Platanus occidentalis).

bigleaf maple

In a previous post from this summer, I showed how big the CA sycamore leaves get, which can be considerably larger than the bigleaf maple. Happy fall!

ps 11/29/11 - I'm glad I don't have to deal with the differences between sycamore maples and field maples like they do over in the UK, The Squirrelbasket and Loose and Leafy.

thimbleberry ~ 07/14/11 ~ Garland Ranch

thimbleberry / salmonberry
Rubus parviflorus
Rosaceae

This was growing right next to Garzas Creek. Simply wanting to show off the leaves. Will have another post with flowers and fruit coming soon.

western sycamore ~ 07/14/11 ~ Garland Ranch

western sycamore / California sycamore
Platanus racemosa
Platanaceae

How much do leaf shapes vary? I'm not positive of this ID. It was definitely a tree. Too bad I didn't also take a picture of the trunk. I can't think of anything else it could be. We're not exactly in the tropics so leaves tend to be much, much smaller than this.

ps 11/20/11 - I originally posted this as a bigleaf maple. As I was hiking yesterday at Garzas Creek, I paid more attention to the big leaves, the bark on the trunks, and the beautiful fall colors both native CA trees provide. To see my new post, check out bigleaf maple and CA sycamore.

four-leaf clover ~ 06/30/11 ~ at home

four-leaf version of white clover
Trifolium repens
Fabaceae

It must be my lucky day, times 2! I never thought about what species of clover the "traditional" four-leaf lucky clover is. Ah, I have many fond memories laying in the warm school yard grass with my girlfriends, searching every recess for those 4 leaves of luck. Looking online for information was entertaining. Here's a "how-to" from wikiHow and its corresponding luck link - numbers 10 and 12 hold especially true for Nature ID. May you have the blessings of luck.

Bigelow's spike-moss ~ 06/09/11 ~ Pinnacles

possible Bigelow's spike-moss
possible Selaginella bigelovii
Selaginellaceae

posted 09/08/11 - Well, I'll be! Here's a new plant that totally has been beyond my radar. Calflora (linked in the scientific name above) calls this a mosslike fern, whereas Wikipedia lists it as a fern ally. Quite honestly, I'm still looking into the differences between spike-mosses and true mosses. This species is listed on the Pinnacles CNPS plant list, so it's a real possibility. I got the heads up from sdttds on my Flickr photo. For a nice blog post about Selaginella, check out In the Garden.

western dwarf mistletoe ~ 06/09/11 ~ Pinnacles

western dwarf mistletoe on gray pine
Arceuthobium campylopodum on Pinus sabiniana
Santalaceae (formerly Viscaceae) and Pinaceae

The Pinnacles plant list shows foothill pine dwarf mistletoe (Arceuthobium occidentale), which appears to have been reclassified into A. campylopodum. I still find it amazing this is a mistletoe, primarily because I think of some of the wider-leaved Phoradendron spp. used for Christmas decorations.