Wildflower Walk Number 2

Post date: Mar 04, 2016 11:35:45 PM

Petunia and I took off on Sunday Feb. 28 for our second wildflower walk. Petunia was poised and ready to go! The blooms seem early this year - so dry and warm.

Below left, the blue-eyed grass, Sisyrinchium bellum, was just starting to bloom. In spite of the common name, this flower is in the iris family. This is one of my favorite wildflowers. I don't think Petunia has a preference.

Above left and center, that plant again (it was just starting to bloom on Wildflower Walk number 1) with the white flowers. Very small flowers but a lot of them.

And here's the same yellow flower we saw last time, I think it is related to fiddleneck because the flower looks the same, just not quite the same habit - so a related but different species, most likely.

Here left and right, is gold fields, a tiny but really beautiful yellow composite. When they are in full bloom they cover the ground with these little yellow daisies and it is really apparent how they got their common name.

Here (above) is fiddleneck for sure.

This one, photo left, is snake root. Don't know why it's called that, but then I've never dug it up by its roots. I googled it and it seems most types have white flower clusters, this one is definitely yellow and it grows all over the place, very noticeable when it blooms.

Well, maybe it's difficult to see the flower in the photo on the left, but my other shots were very much out of focus. This flower is another common but very pretty and welcome, blue dicks. It grows from a bulb and puts up a long stalk with a small cluster of bluish flowers at the top. Very pretty, another favorite.

Above, a tiny tiny plant with a tiny flower - a Lotus - chaparral pea.

This (above) is wild cucumber. It is pretty enough, but mostly I liked this scene for the contrast in textures and colors between the variously green plants and the gray fallen log. Below, California melic is a beautiful native perennial grass that is just beginning to bloom. I really like it, I like the native bunch grasses in general.

Once in a while, Petunia and I would come across a bare area that looked like it had been rototilled - and it had, in a way, but by wild/feral pigs rather than by machine. The pigs like to root around under the oak trees, perhaps looking for acorns, underground mushrooms, and bulbs. Large-ish area below left, small area below right. It's what pigs do.

A couple shots of the canyon from a ridgetop, below. Rugged country! The photo on the left is looking downstream (south) and the photo on the right is looking upstream (more or less north).

The photo to the left is looking west from the ridgetop (one of the ridges), you can see some of our neighbor's outbuildings and in the far distance, the Santa Lucia range of the Coast Ranges.

That's probably enough for this post!