Tag Archives: Botany

August 9, 2012 · 10:09 am

Plant of the day: coastal gumweed

Masses of yellow flowers are blooming beside the lagoon. Bees swarm over the blossoms, rummaging for pollen in their daisy-like centers. Nearby, white goo that looks like Elmer’s glue coats the younger, unopened buds. The green bracts surrounding the petals are fleshy spikes, curved strongly backward.

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This is coastal gumweed, or Grindelia stricta. The species is highly variable, growing either upright to about waist height, or prostrate along the ground. You can find it along the Pacific coast from Los Angeles to Washington state. The erect version shown above (Grindelia stricta var. angustifolia) was photographed at the Bolinas Lagoon; it’s usually found in salt marshes. This is the only local species of Grindelia to have woody stems so it is easy to tell apart from other gumweeds. Other names for this species include Oregon gumweed and marsh gum plant.

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August 8, 2012 · 11:40 pm

Plant of the day: sticky sandspurry

Spergularia macrotheca

On the upper edge of a salt marsh, pale purple flowers grow low to the ground. This is sticky sandspurry, or Spergularia macrotheca. There are several different species of spurrys in the area, and all are very similar. To identify S. macrotheca I had to get out my hand lens and look close at the tiny seeds. In this species, each seed is surrounded by a narrow, papery halo (or “wing”).

With its five pale petals surrounding cheery yellow stamens, sticky sandspurry can be found along the Pacific coast states up to Canada and southeast Alaska. The plant earns its name by being covered with short, sticky hairs. Clustered leaves, rising from a swollen spot in the stem, give a clue that it’s in the Caryophyllaceae family.

It prefers to grow in wet places, often near saltwater, but it also can be found by freshwater seeps, springs and vernal pools–and in non-wetlands as well.

Notice the swollen stem at the leaf nodes

 

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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 25, 2012 · 5:37 pm

Plant of the day: creeping buttercup

In low wet places, a mat of green leaves and yellow flowers grows. The flowers have five glossy, spreading petals and many stamens. Pale green splotches dot the leaves, which are three-parted and ragged at their ends.

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This is creeping buttercup, or Ranunculus repens. It’s a mildly invasive plant that is becoming common along trails and roadsides where it can form large patches. Its stem can sprout roots where it touches the ground, enabling it to spread easily.

This flower is a relative of the taller, leggy California buttercup (a native).

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July 22, 2012 · 11:06 pm

Plant of the day: fennel

It tastes great in salads, but fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) is an unfortunate weed in California. It grows avidly along roadsides and in other disturbed places. This plant grows up to ten feet tall, with feathery leaves and yellow umbrella-shaped umbels of flowers.

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The leaves and the seeds have a distinctive licorice flavor, which is likely why the plant came to the Americas in the first place. It’s been used as a spice and a medicinal plant for centuries, and is thought to have escaped into the wild time after time.

Fennel is an invasive species, and takes over areas by forming dense stands where nothing else can grow. This isn’t just because the plants are so numerous that there is no room for any others. They also exude chemicals that actually prevent their competitors from growing!


Check out the above video for an musical animated interpretation of why fennel is a problem…
 

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July 19, 2012 · 11:56 pm

Plant of the day: moth mullein

A flash of pale yellow underneath a coyote bush. Growing up under the gray branches of the shrub is a stalk holding several pretty, broad-faced flowers. The five petals surround a hairy, reddish-pink cluster of stamens. The stamens and pistil are flamboyant: the three upper stamens are clustered together, while the lower ones–and the pistil–scoop outward, presumably an invitation to insects.

This unusually striking flower is moth mullein (Verbascum blattaria), and unfortunately it’s not a native to California. It was introduced from Eurasia and has spread across much of the United States. Other species of mullein share the distinctive hairy-ness and the unusual stamen-and-pistil pattern, but otherwise look quite different.

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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 16, 2012 · 9:44 pm

Plant of the day: Himalayan blackberry

In ditches and along river banks, the berries are beginning to ripen. Great green mounds of shrubs – all leaves and thorny branches – are speckled with dark purple fruit. Younger berries are still green or red, and most bushes still have flowers on them as well.

This is the Himalayan blackberry (Rubus armeniacus), one of the most common berries around. It is also one of the only non-native invasive berries in the area. Though it’s delicious in pies, smoothies and endless other treats, this shrub can be a nasty problem for native habitats: I’ve seen it smother entire fields, leaving no space for native plants and the animals that depend on them. Usually you’ll see it in disturbed places and on poor soils. Despite the name, the bush originally came from western Europe and there is “no evidence” that it came from the Himalayas.

One nifty thing about this “fruit” is that it’s actually a bunch of small fruits – each little nub on the berry is called a “drupelet” in botany-speak.

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July 15, 2012 · 9:02 am

Plant of the day: slender tarweed

Here is a common little tarweed with small unobtrusive flowers. Madia gracilis has the strong odor and sticky stem that’s common to the tarweeds (or gumweeds, which is another one of this little guy’s common names). The flowers are often dwarfed by the bulbous green cup of sepals below. If you look close you’ll see that the entire plant is covered with little glandular hairs, with tiny black dots atop stubby white bristles.

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