Natural History Wanderings

Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area has the following new wildflower  and trail updates:

What a crazy Spring it has been. Recently everyone has been working on the fire so a lot of our regular business has been put on hold. Safety concerns keep the trails in the burn area closed until the situation can be fully assessed. Don’t forget that this is not only about your safety but also that the environment is very fragile right now. It may look like just some burned-out moonscape but how it recovers next year will depend on how we treat it now. Thoughtless footprints through the burn (so very tempting now that everything is wide open and in plain view) can have a negative impact that will last for years. My “tread lightly” solution has always been to look at things, even things close by, with a pair of binoculars. I always buy my binocs with close-focusing characteristics so I can get a close-up view of flowers even when only a few feet off trail. They are a little more expensive than the typical pair but they have helped me avoid needlessly trampling things for years. Not only that they significantly reduce my risk of exposure to things like poison oak, ticks, and rattlesnakes by keeping me on-trail.

As you probably know things remain excruciatingly dry. That said you can find flowers but you will need to use your “Summer” flower hunting skills to find them. The clarkias and other late season flowers are doing OK in some locations but a lot of reliable sites look pretty barren. Other plants we typically expect to still be blooming have prematurely withered. I’ve noticed that many plants that did flower this year did not have enough resources left over to produce seeds. For example, it appears we’ve essentially lost the entire shooting star seed crop at many locations. Here at CXR we did the piece of the backbone trail south of Yerba Buena a couple weeks ago and it had some sparse but nice displays on it. There are other sheltered trails worth exploring. Let us all know what else you have been seeing.

Red Rock Canyon  05/15/13

I went to Red Rock Canyon off of Old Topanga Road because it often has magnificent displays of spring flowers. This year is not its best showing, or possibly it flowered much earlier. The creek is completely dry and there are not dense banks of flowers as there often are but it is still worth a visit. There are many farewell-to-spring and elegant clarkia mixed with live-forever and few fading larkspur blossoms. The most exciting blooms are the large yellow mariposas. There are also slender sunflowers.  ‑ Dorothy Steinicke

Upper Zuma Backbone Trail, Encinal Canyon about half way to Kanan Dume 05/11/13

We saw, elegant clarkia, California poppy, white chaenectus, California thistle, Spanish clover, Chinese houses, blue larkspur, yucca, purple clarkia, California buckwheat, black sage, chemise, popcorn (two kinds), sticky monkey flower, cinquefoil, heart-leaved penstemon, cliff aster, black mustard, marsh parsley, bird’s beak, deer weed, golden yarrow, and globe lilies. Nearby at the creek we saw creek monkey flower, annual paintbrush, Red-skinned onion, Canchalagua, Checker bloom, and Water Speedwell.

See Older Reports at: What’s Blooming.