Friday, February 4, 2011

western dogwood ~ 02/04/11 ~ Hatton Canyon



OK, I'm getting pooped out on ID'ing plants for today. Does anyone know what these are? The green to red stems were gorgeous!

ps 02/10/11 - I originally posted this as unknown green and red stems. Thanks to Cindy at Dipper Ranch, I was able to track down the ID. I did a search query on which kinds of Cornus are found in this area and the subspecies occidentalis is the only one on record. That's good enough for me. As is becoming my custom, I obtained the common name from Jepson; I didn't like red-osier as a descriptor, because it makes it sound like it's a willow. I've made the corrections to the ID above and made a comment below.

2 comments:

Cindy said...

The leaves in the first photo are definitely a dogwood. Not sure which one but the creek dogwood (Cornus sericea) does get brilliant red stems. I am just not used to seeing so many stems clustered together as in your photo so it may be a different dogwood species or something in the environment may make it grow like that there. Lovely
http://www.calflora.org/cgi-bin/species_query.cgi?where-taxon=Cornus+californica

Katie (Nature ID) said...

Awesome, Cindy! Thank you very much. Same species, different subspecies. I've added a postscript above. I have a difficult time identifying plants, especially when they're not in bloom. I am getting better at making sure to take photographs of things like leaves. Duh! Again, many thanks.