[ Lost in the Landscape ]

miramar mounds national natural landmark

Last week I par­tic­i­pated in a trip to Mira­mar Mounds National Nat­ural Land­mark that I helped orga­nize for a group of us from the local native plant soci­ety. Only a few vis­i­tors get to visit every year, so we were lucky to have the oppor­tu­nity. JoEllen Kasse­baum, Botanist for Marine Corps Air Sta­tion Mira­mar, inter­preted for us.

Sev­eral endan­gered species call the Land­mark home. The best-known is prob­a­bly San Diego mesa mint, Pogog­yne abram­sii, a plant with extremely lim­ited distribution.

San Diego but­ton cel­ery is another endan­gered plant found on the Land­mark. Both these species live only in ver­nal pools. The issue isn’t so much that the plants are wimps. Give them a lit­tle depres­sion filled with water for a few weeks and they thrive. They’re endan­gered because the gen­tly rolling ter­rain that favors the cre­ation of ver­nal pools is also easy land to develop. (Sad to say, my house prob­a­bly sits on land where ver­nal pools were found sixty years ago.)

The super­star of the pools last week, how­ever, was the toothed cal­i­coflower, Down­ingia cus­p­i­data. The way it grows only in the pools cre­ates a really cool effect when it blooms. The land around the pools is what­ever color the chap­ar­ral is, but the pools become this solid mass of soft lavender.

Sorry for shar­ing so many of the down­ingia pho­tos, but the dis­plays were way too amaz­ing not to!

And there were other things bloom­ing away. Here’s a small sampling.

Bounded by free­ways on two sides, a city land­fill on another, and run­ways of the Marine air­base to the north, it’s an unpromis­ing loca­tion for 400-plus acres of rare ver­nal pool habi­tat. The Land­mark, ded­i­cated in 1972, remains a part of MCAS Mira­mar. The land isn’t tech­ni­cally a preserve–national secu­rity inter­ests could cause the land to be with­drawn back into mil­i­tary use. But the same rea­sons that make this an unlikely loca­tion for a nature destination–the free­ways, the dump–also make it a com­pro­mised loca­tion for mil­i­tary activ­i­ties. We can keep our fin­gers crossed that it remains ded­i­cated to pre­serv­ing these rare resources.

April 25 2010 | Categories: landscape • places | Tags: Downingia cuspidata • Eryngium aristulatum var. parishii • native plants • Pogogyne abramsii • San Diego button celery • San Diego mesa mint • vernal pools | 10 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: endangered species • hardscape • San Diego mesa mint • shade • vernal pools | 4 Comments »