white-lined sphinx ~ 04/15/14 ~ Pinnacles

white-lined sphinx nectaring on giraffe's head

Hyles lineata nectaring on Lamium amplexicaule 

Lamiaceae

Well, I won't win any photography awards for these photos, but it's good enough to show how impressively long its proboscis is and for an ID.  I've been casually calling these hummingbird moths.  Problem is no one knows what I'm talking about.  In my defense, I spotted what I believe was a Hyles lineata during a break in the rain at SFB Morse Botanical Reserve on February 28, which happened to be around the time when I also started seeing rufous hummingbirds on migration.  On an overcast day, the overall coloring for both the hefty moth and the tan bird are remarkably similar, and the name stuck in my head.  I have Paul to thank for correcting me when we saw another white-lined sphinx along the butterfly highway. 

Thanks to the blurring of memory through time, I had forgotten all about the clearwings (hey, if you don't use it, you lose it).  Back when I lived in OH, I was familiar with the hummingbird clearwing (Hemaris thysbe), which can have the more traditional green and red coloring of hummingbirds.  They were popular subjects of insect question calls to the museum and were frequently described as hovering like a hummingbird with a lobster tail.  Pinnacles has a different clearwing, the bumble bee moth (Hemaris thetis), formerly classified under the eastern snowberry clearwing sphinx (Hemaris diffinis).  I plan on keeping my eye out for them, because day-flying sphinx moths are fun to watch.

giraffe's head ~ 03/26/14 ~ Ahwahnee Hills

giraffe's head / henbit deadnettle

Lamium amplexicaule

Lamiaceae

Like with owl's-clovers, it doesn't take a big stretch of the imagination to see why the CA locals call this giraffe's head.  They're often featured as a plant in bloom at the Garland Ranch visitor's center, yet after years of looking, I've never seen it growing there myself.  So, I was a little surprised to find out this is not a native plant.  It hails from Europe, Asia, and Africa, if Wikipedia is correct.  For some reason the flowers remind me of CA hedgenettle, even though the leaves are totally different.

vinegar weed ~ 11/17/13 ~ Garland Ranch

vinegar weed / turpentine weed / vinegar bluecurls
Trichostema lanceolatum
Lamiaceae

Given how late in the year it is and how dry it's been, I really wasn't expecting to find any flowers blooming at Garland Ranch.  Quelle surprise!  I spotted two short vinegar weed plants in their lovely purple glory on a small sunny slope, a location which usually sprouts shootingstars and Johnny jump ups in the early spring.  These were softly fuzzy (i.e., non-irritating) and left a heavy scent on my fingers for hours.  I associate the smell to a mixture of turpentine and pitcher sage.  I kinda liked it.  It didn't remind me of vinegar at all.  The structure of the flowers fascinates me with its curve way back and then up and around.  I'd love to see how the mechanism works on pollinators.

black sage ~ 03/03/12 ~ Jacks Peak

black sage
Salvia mellifera
Lamiaceae

Ever since my Doh! moment of finding junipers on Juniper Canyon Trail at Pinnacles, I realized I could pay better attention to the names of trails and why they might be named that. So, when I headed down Sage Trail, I kept my eye out for sages. This is a new ID for Nature ID. Black sage is found at all my favorite hiking haunts, but I have never bothered to take note of it before. Two sites that have great information about sages in CA, are Las Pilitas Nursery (I especially like the section titled "Other stinky things that are also called sages but are not.") and Wayne's Word (He starts off with a cursory review of sages around the world and ends up in CA.).

Does anyone know if black sage leaves can be used in cooking? One of my favorite sauces to make is crispy sage with browned butter. I grow garden sage in the windowsill just for this purpose.

vinegar weed ~ 10/01/11 ~ Garland Ranch

vinegar weed / turpentine weed / vinegar bluecurls
Trichostema lanceolatum
Lamiaceae

Here's one flower I'm sure I wouldn't want to take a strong whiff. In a previous post on the closely related woolly bluecurls, I was asked how they smell. I've long gotten out of the habit of sticking my nose up to unknown plants or even rubbing the leaves with my fingers and smelling them. Apparently, the woolly bluecurls shrubs are sweeter smelling than vinegar weed. I'll have to ask Andy if he could smell this plant on the warm air. Look at how dry it was on the mesa. I'm amazed anything could be blooming after months of no significant rain.

pitcher sage ~ 06/10/11 ~ Pinnacles

pitcher sage / California pitcher plant

Lepechinia calycina
Lamiaceae

Edited 07/16/11 - I originally posted with pictures from 06/09/11, but I like these photos better. The previous day the pitcher sages were so fragrant that it stopped us in our tracks. I've seen these at Fort Ord before, but I never noticed its incredibly wonderful scent. Maybe the very warm day helped spread the smell. I wonder if the flowers and leaves can be eaten. I would definitely include this in my dream garden.

coyote mint ~ 06/09/11 ~ Pinnacles

coyote mint
Monardella villosa
Lamiaceae

I am not terribly familiar with this plant. I'm fairly sure of the ID, only because I can't find anything else that it could be.

woolly bluecurls ~ 06/09/11 ~ Pinnacles

woolly bluecurls
Trichostema lanatum
Lamiaceae

It's so fuzzy! I love all things soft and fuzzy. At first glance the well-named woolly bluecurls reminded me of the non-native Mexican bush sage (Salvia leucantha), a deer-resistant plant I frequently see and touch in gardens around the Monterey area. I'd opt for this native in my dream garden, but it looks a little challenging to grow.

creeping sage / Sonoma sage
Salvia sonomensis
Lamiaceae

At first I thought this might be a chia (S. columbariae), but the flowers and leaves totally don't match. The leaves remind me of the garden sage (S. officinalis) I get from the farmers' market to make crispy sage in browned butter. Yum! Other than that, I can't seem to find a match for this pretty little plant. I thought this would be easy to ID. Nope. Can you ID?

ps 05/01/11 - I originally posted this as an unknown sage in a fit of fever and lack of energy. Just a few hours after posting the above on 04/27/11, I ended up in the emergency room and spent a few days in the hospital. I'm finally home and free to go to the bathroom without having to disconnect from wires and tubes and haul around an IV stand. As a parting gift, the nice doctors gave me a colorful cocktail of more pills than I've ever taken in my life. While I try to minimize mentions of my personal troubles on Nature ID, I am issuing a disclaimer: I may start posting some wonky/excessive blog entries in the next week as I stay home to recover while high on these meds. Please ignore or have a good laugh. Thanks to commenters and Brian LeNeve from the Monterey Bay Chapter of the CNPS for providing me with the name of this plant, so named for the way it spreads along the ground. As usual, I've corrected the ID's above with embedded links for anyone who would like to see and read more information.

coyote mint
Monardella villosa
Lamiaceae

This flower reminded me of wild bergamot, aka bee balm (Monarda fistulosa), but apparently it's found almost everywhere in North America, except places like CA, FL, and AK. I certainly could have used some bergamot tea for my ails the past few weeks. Again, this is an Andy photo as I wasn't out with him this day. Additionally, I myself have never hiked at Toro Park, so this is a new local location for this blog.

lance leaf self heal
Prunella vulgaris var. lanceolata
Lamiaceae

This flower definitely caught my attention as I don't remember ever noticing it before. (it could be due to my poor memory or due to the fact this place is new for me). I've never heard of self heals until I looked it up. It reminded me a little of a stouter hedge nettle and figured it was in the mint family. The bumble bees seem to love this flower. I'm curious to know how it came by its common name.

CA hedgenettle ~ 05/13/10 ~ Elkhorn Slough

orange-rumped bumble bee on California hedgenettle
Bombus melanopygus on Stachys bullata
Lamiaceae

So, where's the orange rump? According to an old post from Seattle, WA, only females have the orange band??? I thought this bumble bee would be easy to identify to species. Nope. After pulling my hair out the other morning over paintbrushes and owl's clovers IDs, I was ready to simply call this a Bombus sp. and call it a day. This is definitely not one of the two most commonly mentioned CA species, the yellow-faced bumble bee (B. vosnesenskii) nor the Sonoran bumble bee (B. sonorus). Thanks to a lovely photo ID site from UC Irvine (also linked in common names here), I'm fairly confident of this ID even though I read somewhere there are 27 described species of bumble bees in CA (and probably several more undescribed).

As evidence of why I prefer photos of the living, versus collection specimens, check out this Discover Life site of pinned B. melanopygus. I dare any lay person to look at those pinned bees and think, oh yeah, that's what I saw. With the explosion of macro photography and institutions wanting to share their resources online, I predict we'll be seeing better and better ID sites in the near future. Often one photograph is not enough; it's preferable to have a whole collection of photographs. Sometimes this can be a burden, especially when those photo collections are not always reviewed for accurate identification. However, I'm still glad to see this trend.

I'm fairly confident of the plant ID, too. The other possibility is rigid hedgenettle (Stachys ajugoides ssp. ajugoides), but it just didn't have the right face to me.

There's also another insect next to the bumble bee. I can't tell from my pictures if it's a plant bug or a beetle. My pictures are still much improved from last year.

pitcher sage / woodbalm
Lepechinia calycina
Lamiaceae

Had no idea what this was when we were hiking. Simply going through Calflora pics for the Monterey area, I came across this. Should have known it was in the mint family!

lion's tail / wild dagga
Leonotis leonurus
Lamiaciae

I saw several of these around the neighborhood, but I don't even know where to begin looking up what it is. It looks like something from S. Africa.

ps 09/09/09 - We walked this evening and I couldn't believe that these were STILL blooming all around town, in September!!! Even if it's a non-native, I can see why anybody would like to have it in their garden.

pss 04/18/10 - Now that I know better, the comment from September may be the START of the bloom, not necessarily still blooming.

pss 07/29/10 - Hmm... I see this blooming around town right now. Can it really bloom all year long?

pss 11/07/10 - Thanks to Sue in the comments below, I now have an ID for this unknown. I've added the common name, scientific name, and embedded links above. I believe it's a non-native from South Africa, but since I've only seen them in gardens I don't count it as a wildflower.