Category Archives: Good for gardens

August 22, 2012 · 8:47 am

Plant of the day: golden chinquapin

Golden chinquapin with nut

In the scrubby underbrush of dry hillsides is a shrub with velvety golden down on the underside of its shiny green leaves. This is the aptly named golden chinquapin (Chrysolepsis chrysophylla), which is a member of the oak family. It’s nuts, which are covered with a spiky golden husk, ripen in the summer time. The nuts are sweet-tasting and can be eaten raw or cooked; they were a common food for local tribes. If you plan to collect them, I recommend taking thick gardening gloves though–the spines are SHARP!!

Golden chinquapin is mostly found in coastal counties in California, but it does grow in scattered inland locations as well. It’s native to California, Oregon and southern Washington, where its range moves inland (and the plant gets larger). In our area it usually appears as a shrub, but don’t be fooled if you see a tree that fits the same description. The more widespread variety of this species is a tree that can grow up to 60 feet tall!

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August 19, 2012 · 9:58 am

Plant of the day: blue elderberry

Clusters of grayish-blue fruits hang from the branches of a small tree. Blue elderberry (Sambucus nigra) is a beautiful plant with arching branches. Its shaggy bark is wrapped around with furrows in older plants. The leaves are a fresh green and paired; each pinnate leaf actually looks like several leaves, since it is composed of 3–9 little leaflets.

Elderberry has a rich history of being used in cuisine, crafts, and medicine–but it must be approached with caution since the green parts of the plant and the unripe berries are quite toxic. The roots are the most toxic of all. But ripe berries make a delicious syrup, jam or wine, and the plant has long been cherished by traditional cultures. Petals can be eaten raw, made into a tea, or used to flavor pancakes. Some have even dipped the entire flower head in batter and fried it! Elderberry syrup is said to be an effective treatment for the flu; you can buy bottles of it at most health food stores. Native Americans used the branches for baskets, flutes and arrow shafts, and the fruit was a main food source.

Before the fruit is ripe, you can tell blue elderberry from its cousin, red elderberry, by the shape of the flower head. Blue elderberry has a flat-topped cluster, whereas red elderberry flowers are arranged in a pyramidal or roundish shape.

Notice the flower head is flat, not cone-shaped

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August 13, 2012 · 10:27 pm

Plant of the day: wood rose

Rosa sp.

In spring, the native roses bloom with graceful pink blossoms. In the summer, they are decked with clusters of red fruit. And year-round, the elegant bushes are lush with small round leaves. A wild rose is a treat in any season or any setting, whether forest or garden. Telling the different species apart can be tricky (the local key requires fruit which isn’t helpful in spring). But at this time of year, the wood rose–Rosa gymnocarpa–stands out because it loses its sepals as its fruit begins to ripen; other species retain the sepals (and sometimes the dried remains of the stamens too) on the ends of the fruit. One of its other common names is “bald hip rose”.

Though technically edible, the small red hips are packed full of seeds that are nestled inside a dense layer of hair that grows on the inside of the fleshy shell. Not exactly succulent, they have a tart, good-for-you, vitamin-C kind of tang. I read that the seeds are a good source of Vitamin E. The petals also can be eaten, and both petal and hip can be steeped for a tea. Historically, leaves were sometimes chewed as a remedy for bee stings, while the soaked bark was a wash for sore eyes.

See how the end of the fruit is smooth?

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July 30, 2012 · 9:06 am

Plant of the day: Pacific blackberry

So you thought a blackberry was always a blackberry, huh? Well, no. Or rather, there are a few different kinds of blackberry, so you have to look close.

I wrote about the invasive Himalayan blackberry a few weeks ago–but now the native Pacific blackberries (Rubus ursinus) are beginning to ripen, so keep your eyes out for them as well. Superficially, these look similar to their invasive cousins. Both grow in prickly mounds of briars. Both have leaves that generally are in groups of three, and many-segmented berries. But Pacific blackberries are all-around more delicate: their berries and their thorns are both more delicate, and their leaves are a lighter green and a thinner texture. Flip one over, and the Pacific’s leaf will be green below while the Himalayan’s leaf will be white.

If you get a look at the flowers, the distinction gets even easier. Pacific blackberry is the only local member of the Rubus genus to have gender-segregated flowers. What this means is that instead of male stamens and female pistils being in the same bloom, some flowers only pack pistils while others only sport stamens.

And that is why botany is awesome.

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July 29, 2012 · 7:05 pm

Plant of the day: scarlet monkey flower

Orange-red flowers grow in the dappled shade of a dry stream bed. This is the scarlet monkey flower, or Mimulus cardinalis–one of the most lovely of this group. With bright green leaves and flashy flowers it is a treat in gardens and wild places alike.

Hummingbirds, butterflies and other insects also love this plant, but deer do not. Native plant gardeners rave about the monkey flowers in general for this reason.

Scarlet monkey flower is usually found near water, and so when you see it you have a strong clue that you’re in a wetland or near a stream (and below 8,000 feet, which is the upper limit of its range). You can see them growing in most parts of California from the northern Sierra to San Diego. Outside of the state, it grows north into Washington state and east as far as New Mexico.

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July 28, 2012 · 5:51 pm

Plant of the day: California poppy

If you learn only one plant as a Californian, it should probably be this one. Our state flower is simply stunning. Rich orange flowers bloom lushly atop feathery foliage. The cup-shaped blossoms were originally pollinated by beetles, but they have also become a favorite of the introduced European honeybee.

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California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) is one of the most beautiful flowers of the spring, and it blooms well into the summer with good showings still going on. In this area they usually grow in scattered patches, but in places you will see them blanketing hillsides or valleys in a carpet of orange (eg Santa Barbara’s Figueroa Mountain). In harsh places the flowers can be on the small side, but in good conditions each of the four petals can be over two inches long. This poppy is native to the west coast of North America, but because it is a beautiful and hardy garden flower it has been introduced to many other parts of the country and the world.

Native Americans are said to have used the pollen as a cosmetic. They also ate the leaves, and used the plant as a mild pain-killer to treat insomnia and toothache. Extract of poppy is still sold today, and was touted as an alternative to Oxycodone by television personality Dr. Oz.

 

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July 20, 2012 · 8:19 am

Plant of the day: California bluebell

Asyneuma prenathoides

Delicate pale purple flowers grow in a low mat of green leaves on the forest floor. It’s worth stopping and getting close to check out the lovely little blooms. Five narrow, pointed petals curve backwards, away from a long slim purple-dusted pistil. As the flower matures, the pistil opens into three parts for receiving pollen.

Other names for this Asyneuma prenathoides include California harebell and slender bluebell, but I have always known it by the name found in the Peterson Guide. It once was in the Campanula genus along with the more traditional-looking bluebells but somewhere along the line it was re-assigned to a different group (something that happens a lot in botany as new features, genetic analysis, or other information comes to light).

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July 18, 2012 · 5:59 pm

Plant of the day: canyon gooseberry

This gooseberry is a prickly delight. From its elegant branches to its troublesome little berries, Ribes menziesii has a lot of character. The berries are edible–and yummy!–but you have to get past the spines to enjoy them. There’s no easy way to do this; you can try peeling with a pocket knife or just chewing carefully. I’ve also tried popping them with my teeth first, before chomping down. This seems to work the best, but you’re still bound to get prickled a few times.

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Overall this plant is better for looking at than for eating, especially in spring and summer. The thorny branches sport scalloped green leaves on gracefully arching branches, and in the spring it puts out masses of small lantern-shaped flowers that bees love.

Gooseberries are a type of currant, and some of the local wild species (spreading gooseberry, flowering currant) are spineless–as are their store-bought cousins. In addition to the canyon gooseberry featured here, there are some other spiny species around as well (California gooseberry and Victor’s gooseberry). You can tell them apart because the first has smooth, hairless leaves and the second has shorter spines on the fruit that are all about the same length.

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July 17, 2012 · 11:54 am

Plant of the day: western rasperry

A sprawling pale-stemmed bush is decked with dark purple raspberries. Warmed in the sun, they have a mild, rich sweetness. These tasty fruits are smaller, leaner, and much darker than their plump commercial cousins. I’ve always preferred the wild version!

There are many listed names for Rubus leucodermis  (western raspberry, white stemmed raspberry and whitebark raspberry) but I’ve always just called this “wild raspberry” since it’s the only native one around. It’s in the same genus as Himalayan blackberry, but though the plants are similar they are easy to tell apart even when not in fruit. Western raspberry is a delicate shrub with slim branches that have a glaucous coating which you can rub off with a finger. The leaves of both species are three parted, but blackberries’ are much thicker and darker.

Western raspberry is one of my very favorite California berries, but you won’t see it growing in Marin. Sonoma County? Yep. Santa Cruz? Yep. Even down to San Diego and up into Alaska. But for some reason it doesn’t like the San Francisco bay – there’s no record of it  in SF, Marin, the East Bay, or the Peninsula.

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July 10, 2012 · 9:46 pm

Plant of the day: coyote mint

A purple crown of flowers above dusty gray-green leaves: here is a coyote mint in bloom. In the center of the exuberant lilac ring of flowers, a round green bulge of unopened buds looks like a clown’s pate peeking through. Each flower is tube-shaped, its sprawling petals accented by many long stamens. The entire flower head approaches two inches across, and the plant grows one to two feet high, slightly sprawling.

One very charming thing about this coyote mint (Monardella villosa) is that it sports a twin pair of tiny leaves at the base of each pair of larger leaves.

This flower grows only in Oregon and California, and is a great addition to a well-drained garden since it attracts bees and butterflies. You can tell it’s in the mint family by taking a look at the square, four-sided stem. Every time I’ve seen it I’ve forgotten to take a sniff, but I hear that it has a characteristic toothpaste-like aroma as well… It was used by the Spanish as a cure for sore throats.

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