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baccharis season

This has been one of the most spec­tac­u­lar years I can remem­ber for coy­ote bush brush, Bac­cha­ris pilu­laris.

With many plants still dor­mant from a long sea­son with no rain, the perky green bac­cha­ris with their over the top heads of white seeds stand out. They look espe­cially amaz­ing with the sun behind them, light­ing up the masses of seed.

Here’s a closeup of a stem swarm­ing with seeds…

…look­ing closer…

…and closer still. You can see here that the seeds are attached to the white para­chutes that give the plants their white color this time of year in the wilds. These pho­tos were taken in Tecolote Canyon, a few blocks from my house, this past Fri­day, one day before our first mea­sur­able rain­fall in 164 days knocked many of these seeds off the plants.

Coy­ote bush brush is some­times used in native gar­dens, occa­sion­ally in this upright form, but more often in its pros­trate Cen­tral Cal­i­for­nia coastal form. The selec­tions ‘Pigeon Point’ and ‘Twin Peaks’ are fairly pop­u­lar. But if you grow the these selec­tions you’ll find that only male plants are used hor­ti­cul­tur­ally, mean­ing you’ll miss out on this dis­play of seed heads that can begin in late sum­mer and last until the winds and rains dis­perse them.

For con­trast, this is a boy coy­ote bush brush, sturdy and green with no sup­ple­men­tal water here near the coast. The buck­wheats and sage and sage­brush have all retreated to their dor­mant gray late sum­mer col­oration all around him.

And a closeup of his dried flow­ers. Noth­ing nearly so spec­tac­u­lar as his sis­ters this time of year. But he’s got one advan­tage in that he’s not fill­ing the air with para­chutes of seed blow­ing every­where like his messy sisters.

Male or female, coy­ote bush brush plays host to more inter­est­ing ben­e­fi­cial local bugs than you’ll see on almost any other plant. I’ll be start­ing some of these from seed this year in hopes of get­ting one of these spec­tac­u­larly messy female plants. Down-wind four houses from me is the canyon, so seed dis­per­sal shouldn’t be a problem.

For fur­ther read­ing: In Praise of Bac­cha­ris pilu­laris, at Town Mouse and Coun­try Mouse.

November 30 2009 | Categories: gardening • landscape • plant profiles | Tags: Baccharis pilularis consanguinea • coyote bush • seeds • Tecolote Canyon | 10 Comments »