habitat ~ 03/31/14 ~ Jacks Peak County Park

Jacks Peak County Park
March 31, 2014

posted 04/04/14 - Zowie!  The poison-oak is going gangbusters, creeping over everything on the lower slopes of my favorite access trail to Jacks Peak.  Within 2 days of this visit, I may have developed my first-ever poison-oak rash.  Bummer.  They're just little red bumps that itch like crazy, nothing like the oozing sores Andy gets weeks later from his trail running in shorts.

Under all that poison-oak in the first photo, there's also a dusky-footed woodrat stick midden on the fallen trunk.  I find it interesting that some of them prefer to build their houses up off the ground.  I'm so happy the bright spring green has finally arrived.  A little late, but I'll take it.  And, thanks to having recently hiked in a different kind of pine forest at Lewis Creek and seeing the contrast, I now recognize there are sections of the access trail that have absolutely nothing growing down below.  It feels really old and static in there with feet deep, cushy soft layers of pine needles.  The Monterey Peninsula is famously referenced as one of the last remaining stands of native Monterey pine with Jacks Peak crowning it all.

habitat ~ 08/24/11 ~ Fort Ord - BLM Creekside

Fort Ord Public Lands - Creekside entrance
August 24, 2011

We've had so much cold fog here on the coast this past month, that it was very nice to drive 20 minutes inland to experience some sun and heat of around 80°F. I was sweating during my hike and it felt great. Unfortunately, we'll be heading to a family reunion in the Central Valley this weekend where the temp is supposed to be over 100°F. Oy! Oy! So, I'm back to enjoying the refrigerator-like conditions at home. Btw, I've added a little weather widget to my sidebar, so you can see our current weather conditions in Pacific Grove, the southern end of the Monterey Bay.

wavyleaf soap plant ~ 06/30/11 ~ Fort Ord

wavyleaf soap plant

Chlorogalum pomeridianum var. pomeridianum
Agavaceae

Finally I have some pictures of this plant's flowers. They're only open in the late afternoon through one night (hence pomeridianum from post meridium, aka p.m.), a time of day when we don't usually hike. Shown in the second picture at the base of the green flower stalk are the dried leaves, although I don't think they always dry up by the time this plant blooms. True to the common name, when the rosette leaves are green, they can have a distinctive wavy margin. Also, it's named soap plant for a reason. The best site I've found that talks about its many historical uses is Wayne's Word.

STRONG WORDS OF CAUTION: As Wayne points out, make sure you're positive of the ID before using soap plant. You'd think no one would mistake death camas for soap plant, but many do, including myself in retrospect. I've seen both plants growing within a couple feet of each other (Jack's Peak death camas / soap plant, Wilder Ranch death camas / soap plant, and Rocky Creek death camas), and the leaves can look somewhat similar when the variation and extent of waviness is in question. This can be an issue if you dig up the bulb in winter when only the green leaves are visible. As I was looking up information for this post, I found a couple blogs and professional-looking sites with incorrect photo IDs, e.g., Plants of California, a Guide to Useful, Edible and Medicinal Plants shows death camas flowers, not soap plant! This is why I try to be as diligent as possible when posting IDs, because I know Nature ID gets picked up by search engines. While I do make mistakes, I also do not claim to be an expert, especially on edible or medicinal plants. It basically comes down to being smart about what we read online.

As a last note, I should mention the lush green stuff in the background is poison-oak. Funnily enough one of the reported uses of soap plant is to treat poison-oak rash. While there are many generic "obviously copied from somewhere else" notations of this online, I discovered Plants for a Future actually includes original references.

ps 01/23/12 - For a soap plant recipe, check out the comments on this tulipsinthewoods.com blog post.

blue fiesta flower ~ 03/20/11 ~ Fort Ord

blue fiesta flower among Pacific poison-oak
Pholistoma auritum var. auritum among Toxicodendron diversilobum
Boraginaceae (formerly Hydrophyllaceae) and Anacardiaceae

It rained off and on during our hike. These sweet purple faces all seemed to be a bit downturned; I don't know if that's typical or is due to the rain. I had to get really low to the ground, trying to avoid touching the poison-oak, in order to get the first 2 pictures. It's funny the things you notice as you're taking a photo. I've seen blue fiesta flowers blooming in several places, including our recent hike at Pinnacles on March 4, 2011, but believing I had already posted this flower on Nature ID, I haven't bothered photographing it before now.

Also, I'm regretting the day I started including plant family names in my posts. As I've said before, this blog is my learning tool, and I hoped by including family names I could start recognizing related plants. It's been 20 years since I've had any formal botany class and barely remember anything more than the names of flower parts and checking to see if leaf margins have notches. So, here's the rub for the regret: once again as with many other flowers I post, fiesta flowers have been moved to a different family - from Hydrophyllaceae (waterleaf family) to Boraginaceae (borage family). Calflora and all my flower books are now outdated. Erg. I'll try to go back and fix the labels for all my previous waterleaf posts.