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Page Revised: 3/2/09 |
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Available Site Reviews Escondido Canyon Cold Creek Preserve Backbone Trail Rocky Oaks Circle X Ranch |
Date of Review 2/25. 2/22. 2/14. 2/1. 1/18. |
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What's Blooming photo gallery: http://www.researchlearningcenter.com/bloom/bloom.htm |
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The beginning of March is often the
true beginning of the wildflower season and this year seems to be no
exception. A lot has popped out in the last week or so. This is the time of year when the longer days
and warmer weather rapidly increase the displays of flowers. –ed. |
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Escondido Canyon Natural
Area |
Escondido Falls
Trail |
Date:
2/25 |
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Bermuda buttercup, Bicolored everlasting [Two-toned everlasting], Blue
dicks, Bur clover, California buckwheat, California Maiden-hair fern, Canyon
sunflower, Castor bean [Castor plant], Coastal wood-fern [California wood
fern], Coffee fern, Common sunflower, Fennel, Fleabane aster, Greenbark
ceanothus, Hummingbird sage, Periwinkle, Popcorn flower, Red-stemmed filaree,
Succulent lupine [Arroyo Lupine] ?, Sugar bush, Terracina Spurge, Weedy
oxalis, White nightshade, Wild sweet pea, Wild morning glory, Wild radish,
Wild cucumber, Wishbone plant [Wishbone bush], Woolly paintbrush. I'd be happy to share photos and have any mis-identifications corrected: socalwildflowers@earthlink.net . – S.L. Dickey. |
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Cold Creek Preserve |
High Stunt Trail |
Date: 2/15, 18, & 22 |
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Greetings flower lovers! It's a great time to explore the local
creeks and waterfalls before the outburst of spring foliage makes them nearly
impassable. I'm guessing that the Cold
Creek Valley Preserve, (located below Stunt Road) is one of the few places in
the Agoura / Calabasas area which is always open to the public and where you
can see a nice display of ferns along the creek bed. (Note Cold Creek Preserve -- above Stunt Road
-- is open to the public during docent tours and by reservation.) Here's what I saw about 10 days ago: Blue
dicks, Buck brush, California peony, California everlasting, California
polypody, California buckwheat, California Maiden-hair fern, Chalk live-forever,
Chaparral currant, Cliff aster, Coastal wood-fern [California wood fern],
Coffee fern, Greenbark ceanothus, Lupines (Arroyo ?), Milkmaids, Miner's
lettuce, Periwinkle, Prickly phlox, Purple nightshade, Red-stemmed filaree,
Sugar bush, Tree tobacco, Wild cucumber.
I'd be happy to share photos and have any mis-identifications
corrected:
socalwildflowers@earthlink.net.
– S.L. Dickey. |
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Backbone Trail |
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Date: 2/14 |
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Today’s hike is the fourth of
the NPS sponsored Backbone Trail hikes in the 2008 – 2009 series. We
will be hiking west to east, one section of the Backbone Trail each month.
The weather was partly cloudy and cool. We started our hike where the
Backbone Trail crosses Encinal Canyon Road. We hiked the trail to the west
(really pretty much a northerly direction for this section), crossing
Mulholland Highway within 1.2 miles and continuing another 2.6 miles to the
Etz Meloy Motorway. This section of trail is entirely on NPS property and the
property ends about a half mile up the Etz Meloy Motorway, at which point we
have to turn around because NPS has not yet acquired the necessary property
to continue. The trail was moist from recent rains and views from the top
were spectacular, enhanced by snow topped mountains to the north and east. Most of the flower activity was just
beginning. There were some left-over Chaparral Current, Wild Cucumber and Big
Pod Ceanothus. Last year we had a second bloom of the Big Pod and I expect
that will happen this year as well. We had to check the veins in the leaves
to be sure the purple flowering Ceanothus was the Greenbark species. Mule
Fat, California Everlasting, Two-Tone Everlasting, Deerweed, Wishbone Bush,
Tree Tobacco and Morning Glory were scattered along the trail. Counting the
“weeds’ like Black Mustard we counted 19 species in bloom. The
section of trail above Mulholland was constructed fairly recently and many of
the flowers that like disturbed soil are beginning to appear. We saw a single
Parry’s Phacelia and young Bleeding Heart plants. Young Cliff Asters
are wide spread. We had two sunflower examples close enough to compare
differences between the Slim Sunflower and Canyon Sunflower. A couple California Fuschia, covered with
newly forming galls looked very strange.
Rating: poor. – B.
Elliott & R. Waycott |
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Rocky Oaks |
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Date: 2/1 |
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Blooms are only fair here now, but many
plants are in bud. This small site is worth seeing now and returning again to
watch the progress of the blooming season. We saw a few big berry Manzanita
with blooms going to berries, lots of red berries on the toyon. In the pond
were coots and ducks (shovelers). Tree frogs were
croaking. Many different types of lichen are visible. The only masses of blooms were on the
three species of white flowered ceanothus just about everywhere. It’s
worth going to practice your identification skills on the ceanothus. All their white flowers are similar. Big
pod ceanothus (megacarpus) has alternate leaves. Hoary-leaved ceanothus
(crassifolius) and buck-brush ceanothus (cuneatus) both have opposite leaves.
Both have thicker leaves then big pod. Both have corky stipules near the leaf
stems. Hoary-leaved has rounder leaves with occasional jagged teeth. These
leaves are very white (hoary) wooly on the underside. Buck-brush (cuneatus)
has wedge-shaped (cuneate) leaves with the narrow
part near the stem. Buck-brush can also be finely wooly on the underside. Trails on the western side of the
site have more flowers. – S. Braden & J. Gillooly |
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Circle X Ranch |
Grotto
Trail |
Date: 1/18 |
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We hiked down to the grotto last weekend
but there was not much in the way of flowers to report about. We saw a total of twenty different species
in bloom and that included all the weedy things we encountered and several
that were actually seen as we hunted around off-trail. Without exception everything we saw
blooming was a perennial and none had started to bloom in any abundance
yet. The bigpod ceanothus was just
barely beginning to bloom on the 18th, but now on the 24th
it looks like most of the population has started to bloom. So far the hills have only a faint blush of
white on them. It will be interesting
to see how they do this year given the horrible stress they were under last
year. –ed. |
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Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area 401 West
Hillcrest Drive 805-370-2301 |
If you
would like to contribute to the wildflower report: e-mail: or phone
Tony at 310-457-6408 |
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