Natural History Wanderings

Santa Monica  Mountains  posted the following  wildflower bloom update :

Fall and Winter are the quiet time of the year for flower hunters in Southern California. It is actually a time when I can get in some good exercise in as I’m not continually stopping to look at the plants. Certainly the cool, fresh air and green, dust-free trails encourage a brisk pace. However, even now we can find flowers. There are almost always some of the past season’s flowers hanging around and some of the early spring flowers are blooming already. I’ve been seeing the chaparral current in bloom since last November and things like bigberry manzanita since December. Some of the early annuals like the little native mustard, shining pepperweed, have been blooming long enough already to have seeds. Although it is still too early to predict, the recent rain moves us one step closer to a great flowering year in the SMM. It was perfectly timed for the bigpod ceanothus which is now in full bloom in many places. Here at Circle X Ranch they are quite spectacular right now. You may recall that last year during the critical winter months we had an extended dry spell that caused many of them to abort their flowers. This means they still had much of last year’s reproductive energy ready for an extra-special blooming season this year. I seem to be seeing similar extravagance in some of the other perennials like the wild cucumber. I’ll be watching the lilies and the shooting stars closely since they had almost no blooming season last year as well. Keep your fingers crossed. Let me know what else you run into. As always, happy hunting and I’ll see you on the trails. -ed.

Circle X Ranch: Backbone Trail from the Mishe Mokwa parking lot east 02/04/13

A short way down the trail on the left there was the most magnificent display of shooting stars that I think I have seen in 15 years. Proceeding further down the trail there are more excellent displays of shooting stars. We hiked up a slope on which there were many more shooting stars at various levels continuing all way up to the road. Shooting stars are one of our favorites and if they are yours too, we heartily recommend this trail. Among the shooting stars there were Slender Pectocarya and Shining Pepperweed. There were, of course, Bigpod Ceanothus everywhere.

Upper Zuma/Trancas Canyons:  Backbone Trail from Encinal Canyon east toward Kanan Dume  02/1/13

The star of the show was Bigpod Ceanothus, which was blooming beautifully all over the slopes, just as Tony said it was at Circle X Ranch. We also saw many milk maids and two chaparral currant.

To see older reports go to: Santa Monica  Mountains