Natural History Wanderings

Santa Monica Mountain National Recreation Area just published a new wildflower report.  They have new postings for Red Rock Canyon, Malibu State Park and Castro Crest.   Below are the reports and dates:

Castro Crest    Backbone Trail      5/15/11

The section of the Backbone trail from Kanan Rd to Latigo Cyn is showing some really nice blooms right now.   This part of the trail heads east , over tunnel #1 on Kanan Rd.  Among the flowers that you will see are Sticky Monkey Flower, Indian Paintbrush, Golden Yarrow,  Fiesta Flower, Mariposa Lily, a couple of different kinds of Phacelia, Black Sage, Purple Sage, Pitcher Sage, Wooly Blue Curls, Elegant Clarkia, Canyon Sunflower, and Bush Lupine.   If you cross the road when you get to Latigo Canyon road and continue east on the backbone trail for a little ways, there are even more nice blooms, including some Indian Pinks.  This trail has some of the best wildflower displays that I have seen this season in the Santa Monica’s.  – Jim Garafalo

Red Rock Canyon      Red Rock Fire Road      5/15/11

The park is at the very end of Red Rock Canyon Rd. which intersects Old Topanga Rd.  Be careful on Red Rock Canyon Rd.  There are many blind curves and several places where it is essentially only one lane wide.

This was one of the nicest and most flower filled walks I’ve been on it a while. The trail is a fire road that heads uphill out of the parking area.  On your right is a still running stream.  On your left towering rock walls pocked with many worn away holes.  There are masses of blooming flowers clustered together.  There is golden yarrow, elegant clarkia, blue dick, chamise, elder flower, wild roses, banks of Chinese houses, purple nightshade, virgin’s bower in seed pods, canyon sunflower, sticky monkey flower, holly leaf cherry, California chicory, lance leaf dudleya, Indian pinks and lots of blue larkspur and farewell-to-spring.  The green hillsides above the creek are speckled with flowering yucca.  Continuing uphill you leave the rock formations behind and find yourself inside a giant green bowl.  There are still a lot of flowers along the road including black sage, wild morning glory, deer weed, bush lupine, California everlasting, Indian paintbrush, California buckwheat purple sage and a few mariposas.  There is one stand of surprisingly large hummingbird sage plants in bloom.  Surprisingly there are prickly phlox and greenbark ceanothus still in bloom.  The road comes to a T the left, downhill direction will take you to Stunt Rd.  The right continues uphill.  That is the way I went.  This stretch is much more exposed and had fewer flowers but there were still some rewarding surprises. There was bush sunflower, yellow monkey flower, woolly blue curls, mustard evening primrose, popcorn flower, cliff aster and white snapdragon.  In one sheltered patch just off the trail there was a large clump of notable penstemon.  – Dorothy Steinicke

Malibu Creek State Park     Crags Road     5/15/11

It was a beautiful day in Malibu Creek with blue skies and puffy white clouds and a wonderful day for a hike. However, there were not too many flowers.  We walked from the lower parking lot to the rock pool and then back to Crags Road past the  MASH site to the Malibu Lake community.  The flowers we saw were:  black mustard, spring vetch, storkbeak filaree, Italian thistle, poison hemlock, yarrow, purple sage, bedstraw, deerweed, bush mallow, sticky monkey flower, red stem filaree, popcorn flower, caterpillar phacelia, elderberry, foothill penstemon, farewell to spring, elegant clarkia, some large wild rose bushes and one brilliant deep red colored purple clarkia on the right hand side of the road past the MASH site.– Fred and Nellie

Go to their website to see all of their reports: http://www.researchlearningcenter.org/bloom/