A pasture is swamped in a sea of yellow. Millions upon millions of flowers cover the hills and flatlands, and straggle over the fenceline into neighboring fields and roadside ditches. This is field mustard–Brassica rapa, also known as common mustard or rape mustard. I have no idea if it is planted deliberately, or if it appears in certain pastures as a result of fertilization, compost, or some other agricultural technique. Whatever the source, it is a striking and dramatic part of the spring landscape throughout coastal California!
Category Archives: Plant of the day
Plant of the day: field mustard
Filed under Plant of the day
Plant of the day: blackwood acacia
I’ve been regularly seeing yet another acacia on my strolls in and near town–on the mesa above Brighton Beach, along the Palomarin trail, on the back streets of Inverness. I first noticed this plant for its flamboyant seeds. When the pealike seed pods split open later in the year, they will reveal a shiny black seed surrounded by a wild curlicue of orange ribbon. I hate to love an invasive, but I think they are just beautiful.
At this time of year, the blackwood acacia (Acacia melanoxylon) can easily be identified by a quick look at its leaves and flowers. It has occurred to me that identifying acacia species is sort of like winning a game of Clue: but instead of people, rooms and weapons you mix and match flower and leaf type until you come to the only possible answer. So: if you’re looking at a small tree that has yellow pom-pom-like flowers as well as blade-like leaves that each have four prominent veins on them, then you are looking at a blackwood acacia. But walk down the street and it’s time for another round! A different species of acacia I saw around the bend from the Blackwood acacia had blade-like leaves with bottle-brush-like flowers–so clearly it is golden wattle and Miss Scarlett didn’t do it. 
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Plant of the day: redmaids
Tiny magenta blossoms are scattered on stalks of narrow, straplike leaves that blend in with the coarse grasses of a pasture. In the afternoon, five fragile petals are spread wide around a handful of little yellow pollen-dusted stamens and a dainty three-parted pistil. Later, as dusk closes in, each bloom folds closed inside a clamshell pair of sepals, fringed with small hairs.
These are redmaids, or Calandrinia ciliata, a tremendously variable little native. The flowers range from the magenta shown here to violet to white, sometimes in the same patch of blooms. There are usually five petals but the size can vary widely (from 4 to 15mm); the number of stamens is also variable (from 3 to 15). The leaves can be linear or more paddle-shaped, and both leaves and sepals may be hairy or hairless.
So how do you know you’re looking at redmaids? The sepals are a solid clue–there aren’t many flowers with this feature. The three-parted ovary helps. But you also have to just mix-and-match the characteristics until you are confident that this is what you’re looking at!
Redmaids are common across the west, from New Mexico to BC. Indigenous people would eat the tender greens and make pinole and other foods from the oily seeds.
Filed under Edible, Native, Plant of the day
Plant of the day: footsteps of spring
This is one of my favorite-named plants. Footsteps of spring (Sanicula arctopoides) is a colorful, low-growing little plant that begins to bloom quite early in the season. As its brilliant yellow-and-green mounds spread across the warming landscape, it is easy to whimsically imagine them as footsteps left by this gracious season. 
The entire plant is saturated in color, with the leaves ranging from brilliant green at the edges into yellow toward the center. The buttonlike pad of yellow flowers is surrounded by a long fringe of yellow bracts. The whole thing has the look of a lovely, wild, painterly creation. Hurray for spring!
Filed under Native, Plant of the day
Plant of the day: California buttercup
The shiny, sunny blooms of buttercups are starting to show up–a sure sign that spring is coming. California buttercup (Ranunculus californicus) is a common sight in much of California. Look for the bright flowers with many petals (between 7 and 22 of them) atop slim, straight stems with deeply divided leaves.
Buttercups were one of my favorite flowers as a kid, mostly because of a silly game my parents would play. If a buttercup placed beneath your chin made your skin looked yellow, then you liked butter. I loved butter, and thought the game was great fun–though now it seems that was the point, since the trick would work on everyone. It turns out that this game goes back a long ways, as it is listed as a traditional use of the plant by the Kashaya, Pomo and other native tribes in this part of the world. Indigenous people made bread and porridge from a flour of dried, pounded seeds of California buttercup.
This flower can grow in low moist fields and streambanks, in forest understory, and on shrub-covered hillsides. It likes meadows and wetlands, and is equally likely to grow in wetlands and non-wetlands. Unlike some types of buttercup, this one is happily lacking in stickery, spine-covered seeds.
Filed under Native, Plant of the day
Plant of the day: Pacific pea
A banner of pink flowers flies above a coastal sage bush. This is Pacific pea (Lathyrus vestitus), which has clambered to this high perch using twining, curling green tendrils.
Pacific pea is a California native that can be pink, white or lavender and often appears yellowish as it ages. The stem is sharply angled but not actually winged as many species in the Lathyrus genus are. The roots, seeds and leaves of this plant are edible, and tincture made from the roots was used by Native Americans as a general healing remedy and to treat internal injuries.
You can tell Lathyrus species from the often similar looking vetch species most easily because the flowers are generally larger–greater than one centimeter. But also tug on the petals; if the upper (wing) petals are partly joined to the lower (keel) petals then you have one of the large vetch species, not a pea.
Filed under Native, Plant of the day
Plant of the day: hairy woodsorrel
A stroll along the coastal bluff reveals little yellow flowers peeking from beneath the sagebrush and scattered across the grassland. Each handful of blossoms is scattered across a mounded patch of three-parted (cloverlike) leaves. This is hairy woodsorrel, or Oxalis albicans. The lemon-yellow petals splay outward around a hub of stamens like stout spokes on a cart wheel. If you nibble a leaf you’ll find the refreshing tartness that is characteristic of the sorrels.
Even the petals of hairy woodsorrel have a few minute hairs, and the leaves are distinctly hairy. This little flower is a native that is found only in coastal California–but it has a similar-looking cousin (O. corniculata) which is non-native and invasive; a common garden weed. Recognize the native hairy woodsorrel, which likes to grow near the coast, because it has slightly large petals (8-12mm long). O. albicans also does not grow roots at the leafy nodes of its stems, and its taproot is woody instead of fleshy (another name for our native is radishroot woodsorrel). 
Filed under Native, Plant of the day
Plant of the day: African cornflag
An art-deco spire of flame colored flowers rises from a mound of leaves beside the trail. Each flower is dramatically flattened, hooded and flared. This is African cornflag, or Chasmanthe floribunda, an escapee of ornamental garden plantings. It’s not a common sight in the wild, but it is established in patches, usually on the edges of residential areas, so that it could be mistaken for a native.
This flamboyant bulb is a member of the iris family, and can superficially be mistaken for the similar-looking non-natve, montbretia (aka crocosmia). But though the color and growth pattern are similar, the flowers themselves are completely different–montbretia has open, symmetrical petals while African cornflag blossoms are narrow, curving horns that open at the mouth like a hummingbird feeder.
Filed under Non-native, Plant of the day
Plant of the day: Wallace’s spikemoss
A small, spiky, green tendril creeps across a vertical slab of rock. It looks like a tiny conifer, crawling across the rock. This is Wallace’s spikemoss, or Selaginella wallacei and I was delighted to see it growing near Carson Falls. For reasons I can’t explain, the spikemosses have been one of my favorite types of plants since I first learned about them in my undergraduate botany classes.
Selaginella species reproduce via spores, as ferns do. Unlike ferns, the spores are produced from “spore cones” that are often found paired at the tip of the branches. Wallace’s spikemoss likes to grow on rocks. It can form into mats in sunny spots, but it is also found in a sparser form in the shade. It is widespread–throughout Northern California, and north into BC and Montana–but not common. You have to keep your eyes peeled for this little charmer!
Filed under Native, Plant of the day
Plant of the day: buck brush
A small spray of purple flowers reaches across the trail beside Carson Falls, startling for being out so early in the year. This is buck brush (Ceanothus cuneatus, or wedgeleaf ceanothus), an early blooming shrub of the chaparral. It can sometimes cover wide swathes of hillside in color, and is charmingly described as “gregarious” in the Marin Flora. I love the thought of a cheerful, sociable hillside of buck brush.
Various indigenous Californian tribes prized the new twigs of this shrub for basket-weaving material. Miwoks would even groom the plants by trimming and training them to guarantee that they would produce plenty of new shoots. Buck brush wood was also used to make arrows, digging sticks, and ear-piercing needles.
It grows quickly and readily, and so is handy as a revegetation species–but be aware that deer love it as well, if you’re using it in an ornamental or garden setting. Buck brush has nitrogen-fixing nodules in its roots, so it naturally improves poor soils and makes them more suitable for other plants to thrive on. In a given year, an acre of ceanothus can fix approximately 54 pounds of nitrogen.
Filed under Good for gardens, Native, Plant of the day
Flowers Of Marin 