Green Whiskers of Winter: Filaree and Wild Oats
During the drought years of 2007-2009, I was actually depressed because the hillsides and vacant lots and riverbed banks of Southern California never turned green. Everywhere I went, people agreed with me that to see the foothills stay brown made them sad every day they looked up while driving or walking. Brown - not the tawny lion-fur gold of late spring, when the wild oats and grasses are just dried and beautiful, but the tired, burnt-hard dark brown of late fall, when months have passed without a drop of rain and the grasses and brush are worn and tinder-dry.
Since childhood, natives of this place know that all it takes is a few foggy days, collected dew drops on the hills, to let some early grasses germinate. But during the years it never rains at all, those whiskers shrivel into dry threads and seem to actually disappear, drawn back into the earth.
This fall, we've been lucky enough to have two early rainstorms, and the hillsides are already covered with serious green whiskers, making Southern Californians cheerful even if they don't realize how much the landscape matters. On the slopes of Mt. Rubidoux in Riverside, where the annual July 4th celebration always burns swaths of vegetation, green sprouts already cover the blackened soil of summer. From a distance, it looks like a misty verdant fog, still new, but close up, you can see each needle-like blade of grass. In a dry year, the tumbleweeds might be blue-teal against the dead grass, but this fall, the new green spreads underneath the dried taller shrubs.
Yes, the hills of Ireland are lovely, and the Alps with their wildflowers, and the savannas and plains of other states and nations all over the world. But listen to the names of what we have here and think of the beauty of what people might think of as weeds, often overlooked:
Filaree, the flat ferny weed spreading so quickly after wet, already the size of doilies in every parking strip or vacant lot, sends up those tiny purple-petaled flowers and then makes seedpods which look like green storkbills. Do you remember them? Bend down and look. When I was a child, they were my favorite. In summer, when they're finished, the seeds look like screws, and if you spit on them, or apply water if you're not a child, they actually unfurl and burrow their way into the decomposed granite to wait for next winter.
Wildflowers Walks California - News
I'll walk in the Box Springs Mountains in Riverside this week, thinking that even though our hills may not be famous or impressive to those who don't know Southern California, the paths up Big Sugarloaf I've taken since I was three will be lined with
Henry Miller Moody fog rolls over the mountains to kiss the ocean on California's Big Sur coast. The feeling of enormity hits you in waves as you drive along California Highway 1, soaking in the views of plunging wildflower-covered cliffs,
Theodore Payne Foundation for Wildflowers and Native Plants, 10459 Tuxford St., Sun Valley. (818) 768-1802. Dec. 3: “Winter Botanic Bling,” Descanso Gardens' trunk show of botanic-themed jewelry and accessories, returns to the gardens' Boddy House.
Wildflowers eventually reappear, too. In abundant years, they scatter their brightness across the landscape. Use of the BLM lands — all area parklands, for that matter — involves some care and caution when trails are wet, Morgan said.
Free family nature walk and native live animal presentation, 11 am and 1 pm, every Saturday. Docent-led bird walk every second Saturday of the month, 9 am Blooms of the Season wildflower walk every fourth Saturday, 9:30 am.
Landscape Architecture: Wildflower Walk
Filaree fruits and watched them curl, which is how they corkscrew themselves into the soil. We saw Amsinckia, Gillia, Coreopsis, Cryptantha, Bladderpod, Buckwheat, Purple Needlegrass, Goldfields, Phacelia, Wild Rhubarb, London Rocket, Mustard, Stinging Nettle, Monkeyflower, Bee Plant and Watercress. In a pond, we saw tadpoles and some young froglets, and we found a rodent path leading down to the water. Again, the kids were mesmerized.