Dudleya pulverulenta vid

In the shaky shadows shines the Dudleya's gleaming pulverulence.

Vinegar weed

Trichostema lanceolatum - or vinegar weed

A ruderal rogue of an annual, It doesn't seem to start growing until the poor soil is sun-baked and dry, cracking and brittle once-mud, growing in profusion to the exclusion of black mustard scourge. How does an annual grow in poorest soil only after it has dessicated for the year?

Scarlet larkspur

Delphinium cardinale - the Scarlet larkspur


The scarlet flowers conspicuous from afar.






Most have flowers like windsocks at the airport















and some have more open faced flowers





cauline leaves withering at anthesis

broken camera

my camera is in the shop, up to four weeks, bummer

Anna's nest

A nest of a Calypte anna - Anna's Hummingbird Colibri d'Anna (French), Colibrí coronirrojo (Spanish). She decorated it with lichen and built it on a scrub oak (Querqus berberidifolia) that was burned in the 2007 Witch Creek fire that burned thousands of homes. The scrub oak has a huge burl that it resprouts from after fire. This one wasn't burned at a very hot temp so you can see it resprouting underneath her nest. This is away from houses and gardens, her main nectar plants seemed to be Mimulus aurantiacus and Lonicera interrupta Keckiella cordifolia and Penstemon spectabilis.






I tried my best not to disturb the mother hummer when i took these, i used my camera zoom and took the pictures quickly then left. The nest is about at eye-level on this burned scrub oak. The male Anna's get all the attention, so here is a female in her well crafted and decorated nest.




To me the chick looks more than a few days old but the other egg hasn't hatched yet. Do you think the other egg is a "dud" or they hatch staggered more than a couple days?




And here is a skull of one I found on the ground a few years ago. so delicate...

Sarcostemma cynanchoides ssp. hartwegii

Sarcostemma cynanchoides ssp. hartwegii - climbing milkweed

The ones that grow at Torrey Pines state park on the coast do get visited by the monarchs that rest on the pines during their migration. The inland populations such as these don't seem to get as many monarchs but the Tarantula Hawk wasp (Pepsis formosa) use these as nectar plants. Also the milky sap smells like rotten onions to me but does not seem to be caustic as some species are. Supposedly the only stem-succulent plant native to Australia is a Sarcostemma species (no cacti or euphorbs are native) . Another species (S. hirtellum) usually found in the desert has flowers that smell like onions. Deer will eat the spring shoots and new growth. Perhapse this is why they seem (to me) to be most plentiful in cactus patches where the mule deer cant get at them.





See the Mutant flower! The one on the upper right has an extra sixth petal and 6 orbicular appendages on the corona instead of 5. Milkweed floral morphology confuses me so if I called the parts by the wrong name please correct me.

Matilija

The house burned down in the Oct 2007 Witch Creek firey. They have not rebuilt and the lot has been usurped by Matilija Poppies (Romneya coulteri) among other things.

Crest Canyon

Torrey sandstone with haemetite nodules:





This cryptic geophyte Dudleya brevifolia grows here:




Both the plant and the substrate it grows on are endangered.

Chorizanthe fimbriata - Fringed Spineflower

Okay, so that last post wasn't a very showy plant, so here is another small Chorizanthe that has pretty pink fringed flowers. Chorizanthe fimbriata - Fringed Spineflower

Chorizanthe Orcuttiana

Easily overlooked and and ephemeral is the Orcutt's Spineflower[Chorizanthe orcuttiana Parry].
This plant was not seen for 51 years and was once thought to be extinct.wiki page



This is an endangered Chorizanthe orcuttiana in all her glory:



This species is anomalous in that it's perianths are included in the involucre and it is cleistogamous(there are no visible flowers, it appears flowerless). Due to that I would guess that it has withdrawn from the pollination game. Without a known symbiont it has become lonely and rare. It surely existed during the 51 years between sightings but was overlooked or simply nobody was looking for it. On Sunday I counted ("Botanical Transect Monitoring") 298 of these in one of the two locations it grows. In wetter years the numbers would be higher.



Here is one growing with another more common Chorizanthe species which has more points per involucre than the three which the orcuttiana has. Also the other species has external flowers, one is visable in the picture.





Some Chorizanthe species like C. fimbriata that grows in my neighborhood even have showy (but small) flowers.

There must be something overlooked by the general public that is special to you, no? There are hidden things out there that you might know about. What are they?

Viola pedunculata

Viola pedunculata, a yellow native violet that can be eaten. When fully ripe the seedpod's explosive dehiscence makes it hard to collect the seeds.link

Owl's Clover

Owls Clover

Orthocarpus densiflorus Synonym Castilleja densiflora is an annual little green photosynthetic semi-parasite that taps into to other plants roots.

Wildflowers 2009

Some local wildflowers 2009:

Dodecatheon clevelandii ssp. clevelandii
Link






















This one is Phacelia parryi













Amsinckia (fiddlenecks) with scorpioid cymes