spring in plum canyon

Two weeks ago I joined the local CNPS chap­ter for a trip out to Anza Bor­rego Desert State Park with botan­i­cal wiz­ard, Larry Hen­drick­son. Our des­ti­na­tion was Plum Canyon, one of the rocky canyons that drains the east­ern face of San Diego County’s Laguna Moun­tains. Spring wild­flow­ers were close to their peak, and Larry knew ‘em all, includ­ing a sight­ing of an Ari­zona plant that hadn’t yet been described in California.

This first plant is the species that gives the canyon its name. Well, you’d guess it’s some sort of plum, but the com­mon name of Prunus fre­mon­tii is actu­ally “desert apri­cot.” Plum, apricot…close enough.

I went a lit­tle crazy with the cam­era, and below are some of that crazi­ness. (I think I got all the IDs cor­rect on these, but if I missed a few, let me know!)

Desert sun is your first impres­sion, but plants were every­where, bloom­ing and not.

Sub­tly col­ored, pow­er­fully scented: Desert laven­der, Hyp­tis emoryi. This com­mon plant is in the mint family–It helps explain its intense aroma when­ever you touch the plant.

Near the desert laven­der, Trixis cal­i­for­nica.

Sub­tle dark blue-violet flow­ers of Indigo bush Parry Dalea, Psorotham­nus Marina par­ryi. (Thanks to jim­rob and Larry Hen­drick­son for the cor­rec­tion here!)

A very cool spurge, Chamaesyce poly­carpa.

One of the things you notice is that the plants often grow in the com­pany of other plants, sep­a­rated by expanses of sharp shards of decom­posed moun­tain­side. It’s not a look that peo­ple gen­er­ally cul­ti­vate in their gar­dens but it makes sense here. Larger plants help pro­vide shel­ter to seedlings. I’d also guess that more seeds end up caught up in the low branches of shrubs than they do in the bare earth with rain beat­ing down on them. The effect is a bit of an enthu­si­as­tic jum­ble of plants.

Desert laven­der with brit­tle­bush, Encelia fari­nosa var farinosa

Phacelia dis­tans with Chu­parosa, Jus­ti­cia californica

Chu­parosa, phacelia, with Fremont’s desert pin­cus­sion, Chae­n­ac­tis fremontii

Even the cac­tuses get roman­tic. Here’s a young Engelmann’s Hedge­hog Cac­tus, Echinocereus engel­man­nii with Cal­i­for­nia bar­rel cac­tus, Fero­cac­tus cylindraceus

This com­bi­na­tion of big and tiny yel­low flow­ers I decided was totally garden-worthy: Encelia fari­nosa with the desert sub­species of deer­weed, Lotus sco­par­ius var. bre­viala­tus. Nearer the coast the coast sun­flower and deer­weed makes a sim­i­lar combination.



Speak­ing of garden-worthy plant com­bi­na­tions, I thought this com­po­si­tion of pale and silver-leaved plants and stems was a del­i­cate mix of con­trast­ing scale and textures.

Spring­time in the desert means belly flow­ers galore…

Camis­so­nia pallida

Pur­ple mat, Nama demis­sum, with Wallace’s wooly daisy, Erio­phyl­lum wallacei

And in the cat­e­gory of belly flow­ers falls the locally rare plant I men­tioned ear­lier. This tiny lit­tle thing is Ari­zona pussy­paws, Calyp­trid­ium par­ryi var ari­zon­icum. So far this is the only known Cal­i­for­nia population.

An itty bitty legume. I have Lotus strago­sus in my notes, and I’m pretty sure that this is that.


A mile up the canyon, as you gain a lti­tle alti­tude, the Cal­i­for­nia junipers start up.

Many were going crazy with the juniper berries.

And a cou­ple junipers had this bug. I’m really bad with my insects, so I’m just call­ing this a juniper bug. I’m sure it’s got a real name… Edit (March 28): Thanks to Katie for this bug ID: This crit­ter def­i­nitely looks like a west­ern leaf-footed bug.

On the way home, climb­ing out of the desert, two differently-colored species of cean­othus pro­vided spots of color along the sharp curves of Ban­ner Grade. The laven­der one was our fairly wide­spread C. tomen­to­sus. But what was the white one? My car­load of plant peo­ple just couldn’t stand not know­ing. We had to stop and do a quick ID.

The slightly cupped leaves helped us iden­tify this plant as Cean­othus greggi ssp. var. per­plex­ans. Although known as “desert cean­othus” the plant didn’t get pro­lific until we started climb­ing near the 3,000 foot level.

This final photo is the plant in the land­scape. How could we not stop for a closer look?

March 27 2011 | Categories: landscapeplaces | Tags: | 15 Comments »

from the desert to the coast

Sun­day I went for a lit­tle plant walk out to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. It’s been a good year for desert flow­ers, but it’s not one of those spec­tac­u­lar sea­sons when the ground pul­sates pur­ple with sand ver­bena or gold with brit­tle­bush. Some of the ocotillo were in bloom, and the desert agaves like this one (Agave deserti) were send­ing up their pink and green stalks.

Lots else was in bloom. But as I review the pho­tos from the trips I’m find­ing that I’m star­ing at a pile of images of plants I don’t know the names of. I’ll share more of the pic­tures than this first one once I get them a lit­tle bet­ter orga­nized and the plants matched up with my list of names.

Since it’s Gar­den Blog­gers’ Bloom Day I’ll share with you some plants from my gar­den that I do know the names of. Some of these are old friends that have been bloom­ing for a while, and I’ve been shar­ing over past Bloom Days. But a lot of these are just com­ing into bloom for the first time this year.

I thought the blooms on this car­pen­te­ria were fin­ished a month ago, but the plant has sur­prised me with a robust bloom spurt, big­ger than the first one.

Unlike the car­pen­te­ria, this old friend, the tree core­op­sis, won’t be bloom­ing again for another nine or ten months.


Many of these plants sur­vive in the gar­den with min­i­mal added water. The cli­mate in this area is dry in a coastal-influenced sort of way. I might water once or twice a month in the sum­mer, but the fre­quent morn­ing over­cast and occa­sional fog helps keep the plants hydrated. Addi­tion­ally the plants in the gar­den have enjoyed a slighter higher than aver­age rain­fall so thoughts of the dry sum­mer ahead aren’t in the minds of these plants. Spring is here.

This Salvia Bee’s Bliss has been in the ground for over two years, but only now is it start­ing to take off.

Black sage, Salvia mellifera.


The local annual chia, Salvia car­d­u­aceae, with the exotic Phlomis mono­cephala in the back­ground. The chia is one of the coastal plants that also can get to be pretty com­mon in parts of the desert.

Here’s another com­bi­na­tion of plants, the laven­der pink of the sting­ing lupine with the stri­dent gold of the cras­sula rel­a­tive behind it. The con­trast is pretty stri­dent to my taste, but hey, spring isn’t all about sub­tle plays of one color against another…


Last month I showed this orange mimu­lus seedling. That time I got it in focus.

From the same par­ents that lived in this bed comes this other mon­keyflower, this one vel­vety red with almost black detailing.


And here’s another vel­vety red mimu­lus seedling. You might con­fuse it for the pre­vi­ous one, but the flow­ers are sub­tly different.

Nuttall’s milkvetch, look­ing full and flow­ery, close to its sea­sonal peak.


Ver­bena lilacina looks bet­ter for me with a lit­tle more added water than some of the plants around it. But it sur­vives even when I forget.

The pale Ver­bena lilacina ‘Paseo Ran­cho’ was just start­ing to bloom last month. It’s start­ing to wake up for the spring.


Some parts of the gar­den get treated to more fre­quent watering.

This Cal­i­for­nia but­ter­cup, Ranun­cu­lus cal­i­for­nia, comes up reli­ably every year in an area of the gar­den where lawn meets unwa­tered gravel.

Blue-eyed grass, Sisy­rinchium bel­lum, appre­ci­ates a moister spot as well.


Geum Red Wings, a pretty, infor­mal plant.

Hum­ming­bird sage, Salvia spathacea, is a Cal­i­for­nia plant from moister places than my gar­den. Even in semi-shade it looks best with water two or three times a month.


And these last two of these go about as far from desert plants as you can get with­out get­ting aquatic plants. Both of these grow in my bog gar­dens, with their feet in stand­ing water most of the year.

Sar­race­nia flava var. max­ima is one one of the first plants in the bog to put out flow­ers. The com­mon descrip­tion of the scent is ‘cat piss,’ but I think that’s a lit­tle too harsh a descrip­tion. The flow­ers are nice, but most peo­ple grow these for the pitcher-shaped leaves.

A cou­ple more sar­race­nias, a dif­fer­ent S. flava in the back, and a hybrid of S. flava and S. alata up front.


Head over to Carol’s blog, May Dreams Gar­dens, to check out all the other blog­gers cel­e­brat­ing Gar­den Blog­gers’ Bloom Day!


March 14 2011 | Categories: gardeningmy garden | Tags: | 22 Comments »

the desert blooms

Week­end before last I took a trip out to the Tierra Blanca Moun­tains on the south­west­ern edge of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park on a trip orga­nized by the San Diego Chap­ter of the Cal­i­for­nia Native Plant Society.

Bigelow’s mon­key flower, Mimu­lus bigelovii var. bigelovii

Twin­ing desert snap­dragon, Neogaer­rhinum filipes

This was a trip that offered lots of up-close flower view­ing. After sev­eral months with good rain­fall many of us were hop­ing for car­pets of bloom­ing desert flow­ers spread­ing out in every direc­tion. But the rains didn’t begin until the end of fall. The flo­ral dis­play was good, with flow­ers easy to find in all direc­tions, but it wasn’t the gonzo hundred-year bloom that we’d hoped for. Botanist Larry Hen­drick­son, who led the out­ing, started out think­ing this was close to an aver­age year. But we found the lit­tle yel­low twin­ing desert snap­dragon in sev­eral loca­tions, and its sight­ing made him revise his eval­u­a­tion of the year to better-than average.

Parish’s poppy, Eschscholzia parishii. As with the Cal­i­for­nia poppy, this lit­tle poppy comes in orange as well as yellow.

Fish­hook cac­tus, Mam­mi­laria dioica, grow­ing in a crack in the quartz rock

Desert poin­set­tia, Euphor­bia eriantha

Greene’s ground cherry, Physalis cras­si­fo­lia


Fero­cac­tus cylin­draceus flower closeup

Fero­cac­tus cylin­draceus and Phacelia dis­tans


Twigs with wild heliotrope

The splashiest flower was wild heliotrope, Phacelia dis­tans. If you saw a car­pet of pur­ple, it was most likely this plant.

Desert land­scape with wild heliotrope

Ocotillo with heliotrope and chuparosa


Closeup of the del­i­cate leaves of the ele­phant tree

Last post I men­tioned my dis­com­fort with cer­tain plant names, includ­ing those that begin with the epi­thet “Indian.” Dunno. Maybe I’m being too sensitive.

Well, one of the canyons we explored was named “Indian Canyon.” Chang­ing plant names and geo­log­i­cal for­ma­tions seems to take about as much time. This canyon is one of the more north­ern exten­sions of the ele­phant tree or torote (Burs­era micro­phylla).

A fern in the desert, always a sur­prise. I think this is Cheilan­thes par­ryi.

The flow­ers were mainly small species. Look­ing up the hill­side the impres­sion is mainly of white rock relieved by tall wands of ocotillos.

What’s the best way to bring relief to a day in the desert? Maybe water?

We ended up in a stream that sup­ported a chain of lit­tle palm oases of the Cal­i­for­nia fan palm (Wash­ing­to­nia fil­if­era). These trees had been burned in the past. This was maybe an acci­dent, but in the past the Native Amer­i­cans were known to burn the fronds to get eas­ier access to the dates. Appar­ently it doesn’t seri­ously dam­age the plant.

Nearby these palms escaped the fire and flaunted long skirts of dried fronds. Liv­ing in sub­ur­bia peo­ple prune the dead fronds off what­ever palm species they grow, and you almost never see this gor­geous effect of decades of fronds sheath­ing the trunk. Maybe they’re afraid that it’ll be habi­tat for crea­tures they’d rather not have. Still, it’s a great effect, don’t you think?

March 23 2010 | Categories: landscapeplaces | Tags: | 14 Comments »

the huntington desert garden

The late-December light was fad­ing when I headed to the wild and won­der­ful plants that make up the Huntington’s Desert Gar­den. The gar­den dates back many decades and fea­tures some immense spec­i­mens the likes of which you’ll almost never see. But what I love most about the gar­den is that it incor­po­rates these great plants into land­scapes that both honor the plants and use them in strik­ing combinations.

Many aloes were bloom­ing with their dra­matic spikes of hot, bright col­ors. The the­atri­cal light­ing helped to make some of the scenes even more dramatic.

(Be sure to click onthe third image to enlarge it. In its unearthly weird­ness, it’s got to be one of my favorite gar­den pho­tos I’ve ever taken.)



One zone of the gar­den focuses on plants you’d find in Cal­i­for­nia. Here a cre­osote bush serves as a screen for a radi­ant gray-white agave.

And this scene employs the coastal and Chan­nel Island buck­wheat, Saint Catherine’s lace (Eri­o­gonum gigan­teum)–a plant that tech­ni­cally doesn’t come from a desert–with other dry­land plants. The gray-green foliage on all of them helps to unify this diverse planting.

The Hunt­ing­ton is in a warm sub­trop­i­cal area just east of Los Ange­les. That doesn’t mean that it’s warm enough for all of these plants. Patio heaters of the kind that you see out­doors at restau­rants keep plants warm at night in one area of the gar­den. (These are the frigid depths of Decem­ber, after all.)

Now, as much as I was try­ing to focus on the over­all land­scape, I have to share a few pho­tos of indi­vid­ual species that caught my eye.

Look­ing up at a very large Yucca fil­if­era from Mexico…

(There’s an extremely sim­i­lar shot of the exact same plant on the Germanatrix’s post on her visit to this same gar­den at the end of Novem­ber. Check it out: here.)

Two tall palms with immense tree aloes, Aloe bar­berae. At the Hunt­ing­ton the species is iden­ti­fied as A. baine­sii, but the tax­on­o­mists have had a change of heart. I have two of these in my lit­tle front yard, the tallest of them still under twenty feet but still impres­sive at that size. The writeup on this plant says it can hit fifty feet or more. The Hunt­ing­ton spec­i­mens are just about there, I’d guess.

A dynamic and lyri­cal tan­gle of leaves on sev­eral plants of the var­ie­gated form of Agave amer­i­cana… (Homage to some­body… later Willem de Koon­ing? Franz Kline?) Agaves with their per­fect rosettes seem to appeal to the part of our brains that appre­ci­ate sym­me­try and order. This plant­ing sub­verted the expected into a beau­ti­ful mess.

A tall, dense stand of Cleis­to­cac­tus straus­sii

As we left the Hunt­ing­ton the light that had made the Desert Gar­den extra-interesting was col­or­ing up the flanks of Mount Wil­son and the the rest of the San Gabriels.

Not far away from the Hunt­ing­ton is Pasadena, the site of the annual New Year’s Rose Parade, which should be get­ting under way not long after this post hits the web. (Okay, it’s sort of a lame way to try to segue this post to the topic of New Year’s Day, but–hey!–I had to give it a try.)

Happy New Year’s to all of you, and best wishes for a healthy and pros­per­ous year filled with amaz­ing botan­i­cal highlights.

January 01 2010 | Categories: gardeninglandscape designplaces | Tags: | 11 Comments »

a little palm springs hike

Red blooming thing maybe chuparosa

The hol­i­day break begins with a quick trip to visit an old friend who’s vaca­tion­ing in Palm Springs. I seem to bring warm weather with me: the days are in the upper 70s and the air is desert-dry. The local weather report whines about only “par­tially sunny” con­di­tions, though the only clouds I see are thin white veils high in the atmos­phere. Good hik­ing weather, I think. My friend is just a lit­tle equiv­o­cal but he finally caves. “OK, but noth­ing too strenuous.”

The North Lykken Trail is picked for its easy prox­im­ity to where we’re stay­ing and its promise of nice aer­ial views of the Palm Springs and the rest of the Coachella Val­ley. The online writeup calls it “mod­er­ately stren­u­ous,” as does Philip Ferranti’s 140 Great Hikes in and Near Palm Springs. It seems doable and fun, so off we go.

Bloom­ing chu­parosa (Jus­ti­cia cal­i­for­nica, this first image) is every­where. And where there’s chu­parosa, there are hum­ming­birds and buzzing clouds of bees feed­ing on its nectar.

Encelia farinosa leafing out in December

Plants of brit­tle­bush (Encelia fari­nosa) are every­where too, but most are just leaf­ing out from their long dry sum­mer­time coma. Soon they’ll be cov­ered in bright yel­low daisies. This plant usu­ally calls dryer areas home but can be found all the way to the coast, and it’s used a lot in land­scap­ing projects.

Cactus with a View

Here’s a bar­rel cac­tus (Fero­cac­tus cylin­draceus) with an awe­some view of the city.

Maybe we’re dis­tracted by the view or I’m too focused on the plantlife, but by about now we’re scram­bling over piles of rocks, in and out of drainages, look­ing for the trail. If we were deep some­where in the wilds with­out a map we might be get­ting con­cerned. But how can you say you’re lost when there’s a big city grid down below as a ref­er­ence point? Okay, we’re not really lost, but some of this is on the stren­u­ous side of “mod­er­ately stre­nous.” But not for too much longer. We find some other hik­ers off in the dis­tance and get back on the trail.

Rock Formations Over Palm Springs

With the trail securely under­foot it’s eas­ier to take in the great rock for­ma­tions and enjoy more of the views.

Eriogonum inflatumEriogonum inflatum stem detail

It’s a bit away from peak bloom but there are a few other things to see. This is one of the desert plants I’ve always found pretty inter­est­ing, whether it’s in bloom or not. Desert trum­pet or pipe­weed (Eri­o­gonum infla­tum) is an unmis­tak­able buck­wheat that usu­ally has flow­er­ing stems with a fat trum­pet­ing pro­tu­ber­ance below the nodes of its bloom spikes. Often it’s a lot more pro­nounced than in these two photos.

Some­times, though, you find a plant that pro­duces stems that are wiry and del­i­cate, with none of the bulging that you see here. Some botanist had some fun nam­ing that one: Eri­o­gonum infla­tum var. defla­tum.

Larry and Me Hiking

Look­ing at views and plants is hard work, so we take a num­ber of brief breaks, this one in Chino Canyon. (That’s me to the right, the slavedriver ready to move on to the next ridge.)

Edge of habitation from the ground

This is a hike that makes you hyper-aware of the edges where the desert ends and irri­gated human habi­ta­tion begins. Even though the plants used in this home’s land­scap­ing may say “desert” to you, you can see that the real desert here isn’t one that stays palm-tree-green year-round.

Irrigated succulent garden

Even a col­lec­tion of dry­land plants can require water to keep look­ing good when they’re planted closer together than you’d find them in nature. Also, some of these plants–particularly the palms–would be only found in more ripar­ian desert habi­tats, not here where the home­owner wanted them. Check out the drip-irrigation octo­pus in the lower right corner.

But I sup­pose it’s hard to resist the temp­ta­tion to land­scape with the plant that’s in your city’s name. Now we’ll just have to work on the “springs” part to make sure all the palms have enough water to sur­vive this chal­leng­ing piece of desert.

So by now you’ve prob­a­bly guessed that at least one of us sur­vives the hike. We both do, actu­ally, but are a lit­tle sore the next morn­ing. That’s where the arti­fi­cial springs–the bur­bling hot tub, in this case, in the semi-shade of the palm trees–comes in handy.

And then my lib­eral guilt kicks in. As a tourist am I per­pet­u­at­ing a dou­ble stan­dard, expect­ing water and shade be pro­vided me, when I might expect the peo­ple liv­ing here to make do with less? Okay, if I had to choose, I really could do with­out the hot tub. But the hike was great.

December 21 2009 | Categories: landscapeplaces | Tags: | 8 Comments »

balboa park’s desert garden

Jan­u­ary can be an amaz­ing month for suc­cu­lents and other desert plants. Many aloes and agaves explode into bloom, and plants with ephemeral foliage are green with leaves in ways you don’t often see them.

balboa-park-succulent-bloom-overviewSan Diego’s Bal­boa Park houses one of the prime local col­lec­tion of cacti, suc­cu­lents and other desert dwellers from around the world. The Desert Gar­den, the larger of its two suc­cu­lent gar­dens, was estab­lished in 1976, but many of the plants are senior cit­i­zens much older than the age of the garden.

balboa-park-succulent-blooming-aloe-4

balboa-park-succulent-blooming-aloe-3

Aloes star in its Jan­u­ary land­scape, with red and orange torches of flow­ers that dou­ble as hum­ming­bird magnets.

balboa-park-succulent-blooming-aloe-2balboa-park-succulent-blooming-aloe

And shown here, lurk­ing in the shad­ows, is one of the local hum­ming­birds, stak­ing its territory.

balboa-park-succulent-silhouette-of-bird

balboa-park-succulent-dracaeno-draco-two-trees

Among the big, mature spec­i­mens are sev­eral dragon trees, Dra­caena draco. In this first photo, on the near trunk, you can see a red­dish patch where the plant’s red sap has dried. When cut, these plants ooze a fluid that in some Euro­pean leg­ends was pur­ported to be dragon’s blood, hence the plant’s name (draco = dragon).

balboa-park-succulent-dracaeno-draco-looking-up

balboa-park-succulent-dracaeno-draco-from-afar

This is a pub­lic gar­den, and so it’s sub­ject to fund­ing glitches and bat­tles over civic pri­or­i­ties. I’d con­sider the gar­den to be in great con­di­tion con­sid­er­ing those limitations.

One thing I would have loved to have seen, though, would be more plant labels. I encoun­tered so many inter­est­ing species, but very few of them had name tags. I have this thing about need­ing to know the name of a plant–Call me com­pul­sive. But the lack of labels drove me crazy. I real­ize, how­ever, that tags don’t come cheap. And in a wide-open pub­lic gar­den, labels can walk away with pieces of suc­cu­lents in the hands of evil plant addicts.

balboa-park-succulent-greyia-sutherlandii

One of the plants that was labeled was this Natal Bot­tle­brush, Greyia suther­landii. A bit scrappy-looking as a plant, but what great flowers!

balboa-park-succulent-alluaudia-procera
Also labeled was the Mada­gas­car ocotillo, Allu­au­dia pro­cera. I loved the spi­ral pat­tern­ing of its spines.

Another prob­lem with this being a pub­lic gar­den is that there are quite a few spec­i­mens where people’s temp­ta­tions to carve their ini­tials in the plant life got the bet­ter of them. This euphor­bia was scarred many times over. But that wasn’t going to stop it from blooming.

balboa-park-succulent-euphorbia-closeup

balboa-park-succulent-euphorbia-group

After vis­it­ing the gar­den I was sur­prised by how many shots I’d racked up in the cam­era. And for some rea­son, the major­ity of them were ver­ti­cals. Is there some­thing about succulents–particularly the upright-growing kinds that mimic the way a human stands–that scream out for pho­tograph­ing them in an upright orientation?

balboa-park-succulent-spent-yucca-stalks

Some yuc­cas, I think, with spent bloom stems.

balboa-park-succulent-boojum

Boo­jum trees, Fouquieria colum­naris, native to Baja Cal­i­for­nia. This plant is in the same genus as the Cal­i­for­nia desert’s spec­tac­u­lar ocotillo, which inter­est­ingly isn’t related to the Madas­car ocotillo, above.

balboa-park-succulent-bloom-overview-3

Aloes and kalan­choes in bloom.

balboa-park-succulent-looking-towards-florida-canyonThe main gar­den is a flat, easy stroll over wide decom­posed gran­ite path­ways. As part of a recent expan­sion, the gar­den now also includes this switch­back down into Florida Canyon, also part of Bal­boa Park. The plants along the descent are still young, but should look spec­tac­u­lar in a decade or so.

Not every­one in the world loves cac­tus and suc­cu­lents. They might point to the defen­sive spines many of the plants have, and they might say the sculp­tural shapes of the plants don’t look soft and cozy like leafy shrubs or fra­grant roses. balboa-park-succulent-spiny-rosesNext to the Desert Gar­den is Bal­boa Park’s rose gar­den. Dur­ing spring­time, thirty sec­onds of walk­ing would take you from the world of cac­tus and suc­cu­lents to a gar­den manic with flow­ers and heavy with the aroma of roses. But on this bright Jan­u­ary day, the adja­cent roses were pruned down to naked stems and pierc­ing thorns. It was the cac­tus and suc­cu­lents that looked warm and welcoming.

The Desert Gar­den is located across Park Boule­vard from the Nat­ural His­tory Museum on Bal­boa Park’s museum row. The gar­den has no walls, no entry fee, and is open 24/7, 365 days of the year.

If the 2.5 acres of the Desert Gar­den isn’t enough of a cac­tus and suc­cu­lent fix, cross Park Boule­vard and take a stroll over to the Bal­boa Park Club, maybe ten min­utes on foot, and take in the parks orig­i­nal 1935 cac­tus gar­den, which, accord­ing to the park’s web­site, was estab­lished “under the direc­tion of [San Diego gar­den­ing leg­end] Kate Ses­sions for the 1935 Cal­i­for­nia Pacific Inter­na­tional Expo­si­tion.” There you’ll find “some of the largest cac­tus and suc­cu­lent spec­i­mens in the Park,” along with a nice col­lec­tion of proteas.

January 11 2009 | Categories: gardeningphotographyplacesplant profiles | Tags: | 3 Comments »

desert plants… in the desert

Let me start with a piece of advice: New hik­ing boots plus old, thin socks can be a painful combination!

bordertopo

Yes­ter­day I tagged along with a group of hik­ers that I’d done a trip with a cou­ple years ago. The des­ti­na­tion this time was a clus­ter of four sur­vey bench­marks along the U.S.-Mexican bor­der. One of them appeared on the map as “Ben­nie.” The oth­ers quickly got tagged as “the Jets,” after the old Elton John song.

Some hik­ers pre­fer leisurely strolls over flat, care­fully main­tained paths. This group isn’t made up of any of that vari­ety. At one point on the hike, while we were cross­ing a broad, flat, sandy val­ley, one of the core mem­bers apol­o­gized to me. “Our hikes are are usu­ally a lot more uphill than this.”

That was what I rec­ol­lected from the last trip I’d taken with the group. But I’m not in the same con­di­tion that I was for that ear­lier hike. Yes­ter­day, thir­teen and a half miles of travel–which included climb­ing up the slick face of a dry water­fall, two stubbed toes and five blis­ters on my feet–was adven­ture enough for me!

borderhikers

Here are some of the hik­ers, includ­ing Para­sol Patsy, who set a high stan­dard of look­ing cool and casual in the wilds.

bordercactus

Say “desert” to any­one and they’ll prob­a­bly think of cac­tus. This is the Cal­i­for­nia bar­rel cac­tus, Fero­cac­tus cylin­draceus. It proved to be a com­mon pres­ence all along the trip when­ever we climbed above the dry stream beds.

borderlandscapewithcactus

The next image shows the hill­side ter­rain, com­plete with bar­rel cac­tus, cholla cac­tus (Cylin­drop­un­tia sp., in the cen­ter, front), and–most dra­matic to the left–ocotillo, Fouquieria splen­dens. Almost any­one who has hiked in these areas knows that a com­mon name for some cholla cac­tus species is “jump­ing cholla,” a piece of urban leg­end deriv­ing from the fact that the plants can break apart into lit­tle bits any­time any­one as much as touches the plant. The lit­tle barbs hold on to your cloth­ing or your skin and work them­selves into your clothes or your skin, tak­ing a piece of the plant with them. It only looks like they jump. (Any­one look­ing for an idea for a hor­ror movie?)

The ocotil­los were leaf­ing out, a sure sign that it’s rained in the area recently. The plants can grow and shed their leaves sev­eral times each year in response to rain­fall. Some were devel­op­ing buds at the ends of their stems in prepa­ra­tion for the out­ra­geous flow­er­ings of tubu­lar orange-red blooms that these plants are capa­ble of.

A "lake" in Davies valley

Another sure sign of recent rains was this mas­sive desert lake, in the heart of Davies Val­ley. Few plants grew in the imme­di­ate area, let­ting you know that these desert plants pre­fer occa­sional sprin­kles of water rather than wal­low­ing in it.

borderdeadshrub

This being the desert, signs of lack of water were all around…

A trip to this area gives you the feel­ing that the bor­der between the U.S. and Mex­ico is a purely arbi­trary one. Gosh, there isn’t even a wel­come sign or a bor­der fence in these parts. How rude.

borderintomexico

borderintomexico2

These are two views into Mex­ico from the promon­to­ries we climbed on the trip. Occa­sional pieces of dis­carded cloth­ing, aban­doned empty water bot­tles and–weirdly–a fry­ing pan let you know that this was an area that was used for bor­der cross­ings. On this late-December day tem­per­a­tures reached the mid-sixties, per­fect hik­ing weather. Bor­der cross­ings done at other times of the year, when the tem­per­a­tures would be over 110, would prove a lot more dangerous.

borderpatrol

Any trip to the bor­der regions isn’t com­plete with­out an encounter with the U.S. Bor­der Patrol. This was out first con­tact, a fly­over by an agency heli­copter. Later, at the end of the hike, as we were pack­ing up our cars, we were vis­ited by agents in two SUVs. For offi­cers who don’t know what to do with the desert it must be a dusty, tedious job. I like to think that attend­ing to a group of tired hik­ers was a fun break in their routine.

The visit by the Bor­der Patrol was a fit­ting end to the trip. This only looked like a trek through unspoiled wilder­ness. The truth is that this is an area that’s com­plex with polit­i­cal intrigue and his­tory, and where the ten­sions of eco­nomic sur­vival coin­cide with issues of basic human endurance and survival.

I try hard to find land­scapes that to me feel pure and untouched by the ways of human­ity. But a trip like this tells you that such a place doesn’t exist.

December 30 2008 | Categories: landscapeplaces | Tags: | 4 Comments »

one perfect juniper

Sat­ur­day night I was at a gath­er­ing that included Michael Lund­gren, a pho­tog­ra­pher vis­it­ing from Ari­zona where he teaches and works. He’d brought along a port­fo­lio of prints from his Trans­fig­u­ra­tions series, images that will be included in his upcom­ing book by the same title to be pub­lished at the end of this year by Radius Books.

The pho­tographs in the series work together beau­ti­fully, mur­mur­ing softly to each other, echo­ing each other’s forms or tex­tures or moods. With bod­ies of inter­re­lated work like this it’s almost a shame to iso­late a sin­gle image. But books being what they are, you gen­er­ally have space on the front cover for just one, and the one that was picked for Trans­fig­u­ra­tions is a beauty.

Cover of Michael Lundgren\'s book

So here we have a sin­gle, per­fect, amaz­ingly sym­met­ri­cal juniper tree on a lit­tle rise or ledge over­look­ing an expanse of desert. It feels like the end of the day, that spe­cial time when the land seems to glow from within, when the earth seems to gen­tly release its last reserves of the day’s light, like power dis­charg­ing from a bat­tery, as it pre­pares for night.

Peo­ple often think of the desert as a hos­tile world, but for plants like this juniper that are adapted to what the desert offers and demands, there’s no bet­ter home.

To see more images, visit Michael Lundgren’s site.

July 15 2008 | Categories: artlandscapephotography | Tags: | 2 Comments »