Category Archives: Plant of the day

July 6, 2012 · 5:06 pm

Plant of the day: trail plant

Adenocaulon bicolor

With distinctive arrow-shaped leaves, trail plant is a common sight while hiking. The tiny white flower is much easier to miss – I mostly notice the leaves without blooms. When it does flower, this perennial herb shoots up a long, mostly bare stalk from the low cluster of leaves.

The small flowers initially appear in a series of tiny heads, each on their own branch off the central stalk. But as the plant ages and the seed pods elongate, one flower will stay perched on the end of each seed/ovary as it matures. This gives the head an interesting multi-storied look, with some flowers still clustered in the center and some perched above them atop their green pedestals.

Adenocaulon bicolor seeds get sticky and cling to socks, pants, and fur – a handy way to disperse but a pain in the neck to walk through. Still, I’ve always been fond of this unassuming plant. The leaves are a cheerful green (with a cottony white coating underneath) and the flowers are quirky. Good enough for me!

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July 5, 2012 · 4:41 pm

Plant of the day: yarrow

Achillea millefolium

Knee-high clumps of creamy flowers stand atop a narrow stalk. Each yarrow flower has a sweetly classic daisy shape to it – and like a daisy, it is actually many flowers. If you look close you’ll see the demure inner “disc” petals surrounded by the flashy outer “ray” petals.

In the southwest, yarrow is sometimes called Plumajillo, or little feather, because of its delicate plume-shaped leaves. It is listed as being mildly toxic by the California Poison Control system, but historically has been used as a tea to treat colds, nausea, cramps, hives, measles and kidney ailments. Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) also was used externally to treat cuts, stop nosebleeds, and as a hair wash to prevent baldness!

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July 4, 2012 · 9:44 am

Plant of the day: huckleberry

Vaccinium ovatum

One of my favorite Fourth of July memories is eating my great-aunt Martha’s huckleberry pie when I was a kid. We’d gather at the family campground by a little river, and eat California delicacies like abalone, venison, and this wonderful pie. Huckleberries are a wild-tasting fruit, tart but sweet. They taste of pine forest and long days with picking buckets. The little fruits hold their texture even when cooked, they  pop in your mouth with a satisfying burst: perfect when blended with sugar and a flaky crust.

Huckleberries (Vaccinium ovatum) grow all along the west coast – from Canada to Alaska – but not many people cook with them often since they are so small that picking enough for a pie takes a long time. Look for them  in forests and clearings, often on slopes. The shrubs are attractive, with dense shiny foliage of small oval leaves. White lantern-shaped flowers give rise to small, round, dark purple fruit that looks like a small blueberry.

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July 3, 2012 · 1:30 pm

Plant of the day: oceanspray

This graceful shrub has soft scalloped leaves and creamy white sprays of flowers. It is happily in bloom right now, and a fun one for drive-by botanizing since it thrives on roadside banks. Usually oceanspray (or cream bush, aka Holodiscus discolor) is a medium-sized shrub, but on exposed hills it can become a low-growing mat, according to the Marin Flora.

This is a good one for gardens since it can grow in a wide range of soils from wetlands to dry and well-drained. The beautiful flowers with their many long stamens are typical of its family, the Rosaceae or rose family. This big clan contains a wide spectrum of species from cherries and plums to roses to silverweed. It’s one of the biggest plant families there is.

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July 2, 2012 · 8:41 am

Plant of the day: little rattlesnake grass

Briza minor

Tiny brown wedges float on delicately branched stems like a minute Calder mobile. This is little rattlesnake grass, or Briza minor. The wedges are actually tiered heads, very similar to those I wrote about yesterday that you see on (big) rattlesnake grass. But at first glance, they don’t look at all alike, since the little rattler has heads too small to easily see, and a delicate, lacy structure when it grows.

Like its larger cousin, little rattlesnake grass was also introduced from Europe. Though Briza minor is more widespread, it is less aggressive and is not listed as invasive (while big rattlesnake grass IS invasive).

Rattlesnake grasses are in the Poaceae family, the group that essentially all grasses belong to (with the exception of some plants with the name “grass,” like eelgrass). This is one of the largest plant families, with over 9,000 different species, including many of our vital food sources like wheat, corn, barley, and rice!

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July 1, 2012 · 2:03 pm

Plant of the day: rattlesnake grass

The brown hills of California are far from monochromatic. Look closely and you’ll see a complex tapestry of colors, textures, shapes, sizes–and sounds! Do you hear that rustling rattle as you brush through the grass? Look close and you’ll see graceful stalks of rattle-shaped grass heads.

This is rattlesnake grass, or Briza maxima—one of my favorite plants of the summer. Sadly this nice-looking plant is also fairly invasive (introduced from Europe, and occasionally planted as an ornamental). It’s now become naturalized in the Coast Range and in scattered other parts of California, which is why you see it almost everywhere.

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June 30, 2012 · 6:42 pm

Plant of the day: rosin weed

Growing across a rocky bed of serpentine is a field of low white flowers. Look close, and you see that the leaves and stems are sticky and thick with white hairs. Nestled among the hairs are little dark dots that are actually glands. This is what makes it sticky – and also the source of the name, Calycadenia multiglandulosa.

You’ll usually see this little plant on serpentine, and only in California.

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June 29, 2012 · 9:14 am

Plant of the day: Mt. Tamalpais jewelflower

Mt. Tamalpais jewelflower

On a bare serpentine outcrop high above the Pacific ocean is a low leafless stalk with a few small purple flowers. This is the Mt. Tamalpais jewelflower, a sub-species of Streptanthus glandulosus which is found only in Marin County. Though the plant is unassuming, when you look close the flowers have earned their name. Narrow, crinkled petals flare out above a colorful pouch that is faceted and luminous like a gem.

The jewelflower is in the same family as radish and milkmaid. The long, narrow, fleshy seed pods that are pictured below are typical of the family, though the unusual flowers are not! I saw this beauty, S. glandulosus ssp. pulchellus, near Rock Springs on Mt. Tam during the MMWD/Cal Academy Bioblitz last weekend, and owe thanks for the ID to Terry Gosliner. I wrote about secund jewelflower back in May – which is also a sub-species of S. glandulosus, and the only jewelflower in Marin that isn’t listed as either rare or endangered.

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June 28, 2012 · 10:01 pm

Plant of the day: California everlasting

Like dried flowers in a storebought display, California everlasting has crispy, white, straw-like petals. But actually these petals are bracts – you have to look close, and at the right time, to see the real (yellow) petals peeking through from the flower inside. When done flowering, the bracts open wide around a dandelion-like puff of seeds.

Pseudognaphalium californicum is a native that’s found in most parts of North America. It’s in the Asteraceae family, along with dandelion, chamomile, burdock and daisy. It dries out as nicely as its name suggests!

There are several similar-looking species to this one, including others in the Pseudognaphalium family.  But I first mistook this plant for the very similar lookalike: pearly everlasting (Anaphalis margaritaceae – thanks to Doreen for setting me straight!). I’m still trying to figure out a good way to tell the two apart – in the key, the main difference is that California everlasting has a taproot while the roots of pearly everlasting are fibrous. I think that the flowers of the first are either bisexual (a typical flower, with both male and female parts) or only female, while the latter has separate male and female flowers. But since they are in the aster family, with little teeny tiny flowers, this is a hard difference to spot.

Just from looking at the photos, it seems that California everlasting has a much sleeker, smoother look to the shape of the bracts, while pearly everlasting seems to have a spiky look to each flower head, with the many pointy tips of the bracts bent backwards a little bit.

I’ll offer more tips on how to tell these two apart, as I come up with them!

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June 27, 2012 · 9:40 pm

Plant of the day: sweet pea

These flashy pink flowers are everywhere right now. Like the Tangier pea that I wrote about a few weeks ago, the sweet pea (Lathyrus latifolius) is an escaped garden plant. It has many sweet-smelling pink or purple flowers growing at the end of climbing stalks. The stem is dramatically flared, or winged, with a flat leaflike shelf projecting out from either side. The leaves are narrow and paired, like bunny ears.

As I mentioned in the last pea post, there are several different kinds of sweet peas growing in the area – I had always thought there was only one! Today’s post is about the true “sweet pea”, which is distinguished by the broad stem wings and by the fact that it’s a perennial, not an annual. You can tell the non-native sweet peas from the native species by looking at the leaves. All the non-natives have the paired “bunny ear” type of leaf, while the native species have many (more than five) leaflets on a stalk.

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