[ Lost in the Landscape ]

bloom day: natives at home and in the wild

This is why I enjoy grow­ing native plants: On a quick hike through my nearby Tecolote Canyon Nat­ural Park there were a few plants bloom­ing away, hardly aware it’s mid­sum­mer and three months since the last real rain. And when I came home some of the same species were bloom­ing just as exu­ber­antly in my gar­den. That’s a great sense of con­nec­tion with the wild, and I get a sense that parts of my gar­den are par­tic­i­pat­ing in the con­ti­nu­ity of nature.

The com­mon Cal­i­for­nia flat-top buck­wheat, Eri­o­gonum fas­ci­c­u­la­tum:

Blad­der­pod, Iso­meris arborea, with its bee-magnet yel­low flowers.

The totally awe­some sacred datura, Datura wrightii.

Amaryl­lis bel­ladonna (“naked ladies”) is native to South Africa, but there were two lit­tle clus­ters in the canyon. They don’t really col­o­nize the canyons and gen­er­ally aren’t con­sid­ered inva­sive. They were a sur­prise and I won­der if some­one planted them here. And at home I also hap­pened to have the first of them bloom­ing in the garden.

In the canyon there were a few other things going at it:

And at home were some Cal­i­for­nia plants that either weren’t bloom­ing in the canyon or aren’t native to this area:

If the naked lady amaryl­lis weren’t porno­graphic enough, here are some of the non-natives bloom­ing in the gar­den right now. It’s August, and the flower count isn’t what it was three months ago.

These last plants def­i­nitely aren’t Cal­i­for­nia natives, but they’re native to some­where. If I lived in those places, I’d prob­a­bly want them in my garden.

Check out the other gar­den­ers around the world par­tic­i­pat­ing in this month’s Gar­den Blog­gers Bloom Day. Thanks as always to Carol of May Dreams Gar­dens for host­ing this event.

August 14 2010 | Categories: gardening • landscape • places | Tags: Garden Bloggers Bloom Day • gbbd • hiking • native plants | 16 Comments »

a little palm springs hike

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.)

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.

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: landscape • places | Tags: desert plants • desert towns • hiking • native plants • Palm Springs | 8 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!

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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: landscape • places | Tags: cholla cactus • Cylindropuntia • desert plants • deserts • Ferocactus cylindraceus • Fouquieria splendens • hiking • immigration • native plants • ocotillos • politics • U.S.-Mexico border • water | 4 Comments »