The June event calendar is here, it’s um.. a little barren at the moment. Less events in the summer I guess, I will check sites for updates in case of some late additions.
After I was frothing at the mouth over the blooms of Cozy Dell last week, Elisa was kind enough to grab the camera on her trip up with Luke. Drink long and deep of the fleeting bounty…
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Hiking Gridley to the water trough (less than 3 miles) yesterday. Spotted 3 from my “rare beauties” list. I am officially adding Death Camas to my list, with a name like that you know it’s badass. Ojai Fritillary will be blooming in another month or so, for those of you keeping score. I found at least 24 blooms, not counting the sages, some fading ceanothus and the California Everlasting for which the picture came out blurry. Can you top that?
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Back to everyone’s favorite feature; when we get up close and cuddly with a local native plant who’s ubiquitous nature and lack of flashy bloom renders them overlooked and unappreciated.
As you look out onto the chaparral covered hills up route 33 this month you will notice a creamy hue beginning to take over in between the grays and greens and fading ceanothus. Those would be the nascent blooms of our trusty friend, stalwart of the hardcore chaparral, Adenostoma fasciculatum, chamise to the uninitiated.
Chamise in bloom
Fascicles
Chamise is an evergreen shrub of the Rose family, usually between 3-9 feet tall , 4 to 6 feet wide. The stiff green needle-like leaves emerge in bunches called “fascicles”. The leaves are shiny with volatile, highly flammable oils which give the plant it’s nickname “greasewood”. The creamy white flowers (panicles) form at the ends of branches from May through July, tiny with five petals.
In the fall the flowers gradually turn an appealing rusty brown which tend to remain through the winter
Chamise is extremely drought tolerant and favors nutrient poor soils on hot dry slopes, often taking over entire swaths of chaparral hillside. Besides being flammable, the oils coating the leaves have allelopathic qualities which inhibit any other plants from growing in it’s understory. The root systems are quite extensive and deep, promoting stability on steep hillsides. While birds tend to avoid pure stands of chamise mule deer and rabbits use it for cover and food
Chamise has a long list of uses by California native peoples. Also know as “Yerba de Pasmo” the spasm herb by Spanish-Mexicans, medicinal uses are as varied as treatment snakebites, convulsions, colds and lockjaw. The leaves and bark were used to treat syphilis, and the oils of the leaves when fried in grease became an ointment.
The long straight hard stems were used to hollow out elderberry branches to make tubes, also for arrow foreshafts and even abalone pry bars.
Abalone… good luck
In the garden chamise is great as a background plant and is highly effective on slopes for erosion control. There are a few hybrids and selections available including ground covers. Cut chamise back to the base when it gets messy, you will rarely have to worry about pests snacking on new growth.
The quintessential southern California chaparral plant, it is in bloom right now, don’t miss it!
Don’t have enough time to pound on the ole keyboard as much as I’d like but I can at least send you off with some ideas for the long weekend and of course some pictures. It’s May, if I can’t post some blooms I’m trapped in a cave.
Let’s start with last week’s mystery plant. My phone pic didn’t draw many guesses but as soon as I posted this:
False indigo
Myrna couldn’t answer fast enough. The leaves should send you running for Fabaceae, the pea family. And those awesome burgundy stalks of flowers should lead you to False Indigo, a California native believe it or not. I found two patches of these up Cozy Dell, within the first mile from 33, see if you can spot them next time. But don’t take the seedpods, those are mine.
This weekend’s calendar has a little something for everyone. Allen Bertke will be leading a beginner’s bird bonanza on Canada Larga Rd. (Luke was born at the ranch at the very end of the road if you care), the Ventura Audubon Society has been keeping quite busy this spring. Doctor Lanny will be leading a hike through his old stomping grounds in San Antonio Creek up in Santa Barbara, a mellow level 5 mile hike for all ages. And everyone’s favorite barefoot swami Joel Robinson will be leading you through the Santa Clara River area if you happen to be down at the coast.
Sarah and I went carousing around the Il Vento preserve next to Thacher school, usually one of the more impressive wildflower displays in Ojai. While not quite as glorious as some previous years we had plenty to gawk at, including the most oddly situated patch of Scarlet Larkspur I’ve ever seen. Enjoy!
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PS… The Lady Queen Rambler Elisa will be manning the Book Store sale in town this weekend Saturday and Sunday, go say hi and buy some books for cryin out loud.
This is a post I’d been meaning to write since week one. See I even have a lonely little category tag called “resources”, a few internet moths flew out when I clicked on it. Well I’m aimin’ to rectify the situation posthaste. Over the next few weeks I will provide you with all of the books, websites and local venues that I used to go from clueless newbie to slightly dangerous amateur. Let’s start with the interweb, it’s free and right in front of you, who doesn’t love instant gratification.
The Good: It covers pretty much all of Southern California’s flowers. Pages on pronunciation, a dictionary of botanical terms. Organized by common, Latin and family names
Caveat: Almost too much information, especially if you are just looking for local Ojai stuff. San Diego is only 3 hours away but botanically it can make your job a lot harder if you are trying to ID a plant. There are no less than 30 lupines for example. Pics are great sometimes, but often there is only one.
Bonus: A cool link with the definitions and derivations of all the Latin names. Trail specific pictures, some local
Santa Monica Mountains Flower Finder:
The Good: More focused on local plants, Santa Monica Mountains are quite similar to our ranges. At least 5 pics per species, often with seed photos as well. Links to the UCLA site on each page, if you want to get really down and dirty with the botanical details.
Caveat: Nothing stands out as “bad”, this is overall my favorite site for ID purposes. Pictures aren’t great sometimes but it’s not easy to photograph busy stuff like grass. They are trying to keep up with all the name and family changes, so many things are double listed. This gets confusing if you are scrolling through a family one by one and all of a sudden you are in a totally different family.
Bonus: The flower finder of course. Put in your details and it will spit out the possibilities. It’s not perfect but a nice tool. Separate sections for grasses and ferns.
The Good: Great for the native home gardener. All the hybrids you’d find in a nursery plus a bunch you’ve never heard of. Usually a few decent pictures for each plant. Good garden focused advice for each plant.
Caveat: Las Pilitas is a retail nursery hours from us. The planting advice is not always appropriate for our climate, especially coastal growers. No scientific info to link to.
Bonus: Tons of great articles related to gardening, how to take flower pictures, build a bird bath, attract butterflies. Well written, tongue always in cheek, Rambler style for sure
The Good: David Magney’s site, for the completist. If it exists in our county it’s on one of these lists. Going out on a particular trail, print out the checklist and mark them off as you hike. Lots of great scientific info, links
Caveat: Not many pictures on this site (though he has many on others). Would love a search engine where you can enter a plant, find out what trails it is on.
Bonus: An extensive list of names of all trails, ridges, parks, water features, campgrounds in our county
Yes I know there are quite a few others, but these are the sites I hit first when I want to ID a plant, get some garden advice or want to see what might be in bloom on a particular trail. Would love to hear your experiences with these, or if there’s a really good one I’m missing entirely.
For being so good and patient I’ll share some garden photos from the last few weeks, things are slowing down a bit but there’s still beauty to behold around every corner.
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Quite a few reasons why I started this blog oh so many eons ago. I was driving poor Lanny insane with my monthly “help me figure out this plant” pleas. Now I’ve got all seven of you to help me when I’m stumped! (More on Friday’s mystery plant a little later).
Also had zillions of plant pics, and I thought it would be fun to see what other people’s photos were like, OK that one hasn’t quite worked out yet.
Last but certainly not least I wanted to have some sort of a database, where if you the loyal and intrepid reader wanted to find when and where a certain flower was blooming you only had one place to go. Well that idea is a little more than the free version of WordPress can handle, but I’m happy to share my knowledge of the whereabouts of the rarer blooms in our area. Some of these can be found more easily outside of Ojai, but I’m sticking with a 10 mile radius to qualify our “rare” tag. The locations given are approximate, sorry I know I should bring out my GPS once in a while. If you are lucky enough to stumble across any of these, please don’t pick them, let everyone enjoy.
Ojai Fritillary
Might as well start with the “famous” rare local, the Ojai Fritillary. It is listed as “critically imperiled” and is not easy to spot. Barely a foot tall, the blooms don’t last long and as you can see they do a remarkable camouflage. I’ve spotted these up the Gridley trail, about 2 miles up, left side among the Southern Tauschia, another bloom I haven’t seen in too many other spots:
Southern tauschia
In the carrot family, the very shiny deep green toothed leaves are easy to spot. So when you see these, start looking for the Fritillary, there might be a few left, I haven’t been up Gridley in a few weeks. The CNPS database claims the Ojai Fritillary can be found in other spots, I have yet to confirm personally.
Sticking with the lily family, as long as you are hiking up Gridley keep an eye out for this stunning specimen:
Yellow mariposa lily
Mariposa lilies are popping up all over the place, but the yellow version I have only seen a few times. On Gridley as I mentioned, I have also seen them up Horn Canyon trail on the way to the Pines camp.
If you are walking through Murietta you might see the tall stem and whorled leaves of the Humboldt lily, I can never seem to catch it in full bloom, June would be my best guess:
Humboldt lily
Wrapping up the lily family, keep your orbs peeled for these ghostly little gals in the deep shade of Wills Canyon on the Ventura River Preserve:
Globe lily
I learned this as the “fairy lantern”, usually early spring, I have not spotted any this year.
Enough lilies. They are pretty and delicate and rare, but my all time favorite is still the Wooly Blues, unruly loud and brash.
Wooly blue curls
A member of the mint family, with the most enticing scent of all of our chaparral, feel free to run your hand up a stem. There are lonely specimens here and there, a few up Gridley, a patch on Laguna Ridge, Murietta where it meets the upper fire road. My bonanza spot is a 300 yard stretch along the lonely upper paths of the Oso Ridge trail on the Ventura River Preserve. A good hour uphill hike to get there.. but literally hundreds of wooly blues piled on top of each other. Might as well also mention it’s stinky funky little cousin:
Vinegar weed
Same genus, this one foot wonder grows along the meadow trail that connects Wills canyon to Rice canyon, blooming in late summer. It has a, “smells so bad it smells good” sort of scent.
I was stunned to see this one already blooming on a hot exposed hillside above Thacher:
Scarlet larkspur
The blue version is pretty common, but the scarlet is much more upright, almost 5 feet tall sometimes and the blooms are hard to miss. Until last week’s sighting I had only spotted these in the rough gravel right before you hit the watering trough and campsite on Gridley, and one lonely specimen hanging off the rock wall just as you start the Cozy Dell trail. Usually blooming mid summer.
As you head up Cozy Dell, keep your eyes out while you switchback up the first 3/4 of a mile and you might spot this lush purple:
Foothill penstemon
Barely a foot tall, these are already blooming. If you head up 33 north of Ojai these literally carpet the Howard’s Creek and Potrero John trails, but around here I don’t know of any other patches besides a tiny one on the Kennedy Ridge trail on the VRP.
Sticking to the figwort family, it took me nearly a year to figure out the multicolored showstopper:
Rose snapdragon
There used to be a huge one up Gridley right after you finished the super-steep part in the beginning, it looks dead right now I don’t think it survived the dry winter. There are a few up Laguna Ridge and I have seen them on the Fuelbreak Trail that connects Gridley and Pratt. I thought it was some sort of lupine at first with the pink yellow and white flowers, the stalks can be almost 6 feet tall, blooming now.
One last Figwort family member. Sarah’s sharp eye caught this above Thacher last week, I have also seen patches on Howard Creek:
Yellow monkeyflower
Small and solitary, I’ve seen these growing on rocky steep slopes, hanging on for dear life.
The final rare beauty, I’m excited because this is the first time I have ever seen it around here and it is just starting to bloom:
Chaparral pea
The bright pink flowers of this large spiny shrub scream “non native”, but trust me, it is Rambler approved. Up Laguna ridge, about 1.3 miles up on the left side, I thought this was a Ceanothus all winter long.
How fitting we end up on the pea family. No guesses yet on Friday’s mystery plant, the picture was purposely terrible, here’s a better one. I found it up Cozy Dell, and I’ve never seen it elsewhere.
Bah, now it’s too easy. Lanny and Sarah give everyone else a chance.
Prescription for Bliss:
1. Read mantra on upper right corner of the blog home page
2. Drive up 33 to the Cozy Dell Trail
3. Imbibe the sensory cacophony that assaults you around every corner and up every hillside
4. Intone mantra
5. Repeat rules 3 & 4 until dizzy Continue reading
