Natural History Wanderings

Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation are just posted a new set of wildflower reports:

   The rain a month ago eased the drought a bit but it is still a long way from being over. Only a week after that rain the winds were picking up huge clouds of dust from the dirt parking lot here, something you would never see in a more typical March. The ground was dry as a bone and most of the water has disappeared into that vacuum literally without a trace. Similarly, the creeks are still not running, another sign that a mere 6″ of rain does end a severe drought. People are reporting that the rain has triggered some of the perennials into flower. For example, the wild cucumber is beginning to look pretty good but it is late in the season for that plant. You might check the coast for the giant coreopsis, and some of the ground flowers in the meadows have picked up as well, but nothing spectacular. It looks like we can’t expect much from the annuals this year. The saddest thing is seeing how many large old trees have died. If we have to cut down many more trees I’m afraid the campground here at CXR is going to look pretty barren by the end of the year. There is still a possibility of rain but the weather people are calling it “late season” when they talk about it. Keep your fingers crossed and let me know what you see.  ‑ ed.

SMM Visitor Center    3/24/14

The Santa Monica Mountains Inter-Agency Visitor Center at 26876 Mulholland Highway in Calabasas has a fair display of flowers in it’s garden. There are quite a few native iris, as well as blue-eyed grass, foothill penstemon, California poppies, and hummingbird sage. Larger shrubs such as, golden current, Rhus trilobata, bush poppy and elderberry combine to make a fair amount of blue and gold. We also saw heuchera and some manzanita. The garden does get some supplementary water which accounts for this nice showing.

Topanga State Park     Trippet Ranch toward Parker Mesa Overlook     03/23/14

We saw a few of all of the following: California Buttercup, Common Eucrypta, Miner’s Lettuce, Black Sage, Deer Weed, Wild Morning Glory, Green Bark Ceanothus, Red Stem Filaree, California Buckwheat, Mexican Elderberry, California Everlasting, Tree poppy, Prickly Phlox, California Bay Laurel, Big Pod Ceanothus, Wishbone and Wild Cucumber.

Malibu Creek State Park     Backbone Trail     03/22/14

Today’s hike was the sixth leg of the 2014 National Park Service Backbone Trail Hike. We are hiking west to east covering two segments per month. Today we hiked from the Saddle Peak trailhead to the Piuma trailhead. This is typically a damp area with the highest species diversity of our 8 segments ranging from 60 to 100 in counts. However, drought conditions persist. Our list of flowers is very short and most of these were very sparse: bush monkey flower, mule fat, wild cucumber, hillside gooseberry, fuchsia-flowered gooseberry, walnut, willow, prickly phox, telegraph weed, bush poppy, sage brush, and California laurel.

Corral Canyon to about halfway to Latigo Canyon     Backbone Trail     03/21/14

We saw Chamise, several Red Stem Filaree, two Chaparral Current, many Wild Cucumber and Winter Cress. However, the star of the show was Milk Maids, of which there were great many, about as much in a ‘normal’ year.