survey season

This spring I’ve helped out with a cou­ple plant sur­veys orga­nized by the local CNPS chap­ter. There are plenty of plants in the county and rel­a­tively few peo­ple to sur­vey them, so the chap­ter picks a plant or group of plants for which there’s a com­pelling need to inven­tory them. The theme this year was dune plants. I don’t know this group of plants very well, so it’s been a great learn­ing experience.

Sur­veys in two loca­tions net­ted five or six rare List 1B species. (See the CNPS def­i­n­i­tion of the var­i­ous list­ings [ here ].) I was there for four to five of them.

At the first loca­tion it was hard to miss the rare form of Jun­cus acu­tus, tow­er­ing over my head. Shown here, it’s sur­rounded by the com­mon but won­der­fully perky yel­low beach evening prim­rose (Camis­so­nia cheiran­thi­fo­lia) and the exotic sea rocket, Cak­ile mar­itima.

(A closeup of the dune evening primrose.)

Also nearby, also yel­low, com­mon, and perky: tele­graph weed, Het­eroteca gran­di­flora.

But enough of these com­mon plants. We came here look­ing for rare ones!

Here’s one that was pretty hard to miss: Nuttall’s lotus, Lotus nut­tal­lianus. I hope you like yel­low. The bright flow­ers turn orange-red after they’ve been pol­li­nated, encour­ag­ing the pol­li­na­tors to visit the still-not-deflowered yel­low blooms.

This snowy plover and least tern pre­serve was one of the plants’ favored areas. The word “pre­serve” promised more than was evi­dent here. It was a patch of sand like any other part of the beach, but with just one piece of white string around it. Any dog or small child or group of teens with a cooler could have stepped inside, squash­ing the plants, scram­bling the eggs and nestlings.

We saw sev­eral hun­dred of these, Brand’s phacelia, Phacelia stel­laris. Around the edges of this patch you can see the one of inva­sive species of Erodium.

Another look at the phacelia… Most were about this size, prac­ti­cally belly flow­ers. But occasionally–as in the semi-shade beneath a pic­nic bench–you’d find indi­vid­u­als almost a foot tall.

And the last of the rare plants we sur­veyed the first day, coast wooly-heads, Nemacaulis denudata var. denudata. There were thou­sands at the first site. They weren’t flow­er­ing yet, but the plants were unmis­tak­able with their long accordion-pleated white leaves. In bloom, they’ll have wiry stems float­ing lit­tle creamy balls of bloom over the leaves.

Here’s a final shot, a closeup of the flow­er­ing heads of the Jun­cus acu­tus. ssp. leopoldii.

It’s a stun­ning plant out on the sand. And of all of these, the com­mon form of Jun­cus acu­tus is some­thing you’ll see offered in var­i­ous native plant cat­a­logs. If you need a big, archi­tec­tural, spiky sedge that likes a cer­tain amount of mois­ture, this might be just your plant.

May 03 2011 | Categories: landscape • plant profiles | Tags: • • • • • • | 9 Comments »

after the rain delay

The rain last week­end cleared out long enough for us to install the shade panel we’d constructed.

The fence you see faces north by north­west. Any­thing grow­ing in the bed is in total shade for sev­eral months. About this time of year, though, the sun swings north, and things start to get sun expo­sure in the later parts of the day. We removed the termite-munched patio cover that shaded the del­i­cate plants last fall–it had to go–but sud­denly time was of the essence in restor­ing shade.

This is where a few shade denizens live in the bed…

…along with John’s col­lec­tion of orchid cac­tus, Epi­phyl­lum, that he’s amassed over the years. We also have a small assort­ment of hang­ing tilland­sias and some trop­i­cals, includ­ing a few sur­viv­ing orchids from my rabid orchid-growing days two decades ago.

This week­end has turned rainy again, fill­ing many of the holes in the shade screen with water. It’s slowed down mov­ing the plants to their new home, but I won’t com­plain about the water we’re getting.

We’re already two inches ahead of the entire rain­fall for last sea­son (July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009). And last month’s rain accu­mu­la­tion alone, 5.4 inches, came close to the 5.5 total for all of 2009. Still we have a cou­ple inches to go before we can even claim an aver­age rain­fall year.

This season’s rain is fill­ing up ver­nal pools after sev­eral years of dis­ap­point­ments. Fri­day I stopped by some pools with a biol­o­gist to scope out a poten­tial field trip for the local native plant soci­ety. Ver­nal pools are among the most threat­ened habi­tats locally. The occur on our mesa tops, areas that prove irre­sistible to devel­op­ers because they’re flat and require less soil prepa­ra­tion than canyon bot­toms or slopes.

Young plants were every­where, includ­ing those of San Diego mesa mint (Pogog­yne abram­sii), a plant on sev­eral endan­gered species lists. If the rains keep up, it looks like it’s going to be a great year for them.

February 28 2010 | Categories: gardening • landscape • my garden | Tags: • • • • | 4 Comments »