Natural History Wanderings

Santa Monica Mts. National Recreation Area has the following new wildflower report:

Our unusual flower season continues to limp along in this record-breaking drought. I think I'm getting used to it. The other day I hiked the Canyon View Trail at Circle X Ranch and I kept thinking it was a pretty good flower display. In reality, it was only poor-to-fair in a more typical year, just “pretty good” for this year. Many people have submitted flower reports in the last few weeks, no doubt a consequence of the annuals finally putting in an appearance. This is more or less on cue if you consider the only big rain event we had this year was in March. The interesting thing in this in this for me is that we are seeing, here in May, flowers which usually bloom much earlier in the season. It seems strange to see some of the early lupines blooming side by side with the Clarkias! The other interesting thing is that there have been a few unusual things showing up. For example, I've seen the little Seaside Calandrinia more than once this year. After hunting for this plant for years the only place I was able to get pictures for the web site was down in San Diego. It's still a drought year and both the variety and quantity of flowers is low, and the plants themselves are frequently stressed and small. I've seen numerous examples of things like a California poppy only one inch tall with one single tiny flower at the top of its single stem.

The rain a couple of months ago eased the drought a bit but it is too late now to hope we will get enough rain to end it. Only a week after that March 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 that rain disappeared into that vacuum without a trace. Similarly, most of the creeks never ran this year, another sign that one rain does end a severe drought. 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. Keep your fingers crossed and let me know what you see.

See hike reports at: What's Blooming