habitat ~ 02/11/11 ~ Jacks Peak County Park

Jacks Peak County Park
February 11, 2011

posted 02/19/11 - I think this will be the last post for this hike at Jacks Peak. I have more photos but nothing extraordinary to share. It's Andy's favorite destination to trail run from home. Yep, he regularly runs 7-15 miles several times a week; I don't usually run... I prefer to do other things. It's great in that he finds hidden, non-mapped trails and then shows me. I prefer parking on one of the lower roads like Aguajito and then hiking up. Jacks is the highest peak on the Monterey Peninsula. Truth be told, most of the ID pictures shown below are from outside of the park boundaries. We're still not sure who owns the land that we use and appreciate so much. The trails to the park are often used by horse riders. The park itself is a classic county park with running water, bathroom facilities, big fields of lawn, bbqs, and picnic tables. The trails within the park are fairly flat and some have incredible views of both sides of the peninsula. Even after almost 8 years of living here, I still get turned around on the peninsula. Based on older pics of the Bay, this looks like it's above and to the west of Huckleberry Hill, consisting of the same Monterey pine forest.

Monterey pine ~ 02/11/11 ~ Jacks Peak

male cones with pollen

old female cones

pine resin

pine trunks in native habitat

Monterey pine
Pinus radiata
CNPS 8th Edition Inventory
for more information click here and here
Pinaceae

posted 02/19/11 - If you click on the first photo to enlarge it, you may be able to see the yellow pollen borne on the air to the right of the pic (no, that speckly stuff isn't due to my poor photography skills). During the last week of January, we noticed the thick annual pollen dusting on many parked cars - I wonder if there's some kind of electrostatic charge that particularly attracts pollen to the metal and glass of cars. There are many species of trees in the area, so I don't know if I can blame the Monterey pines for our non-stop runny noses. The recent rains do seem to help alleviate the allergies.

While the Monterey pine tree has been introduced around the world for lumber, apparently, the Monterey Peninsula is one of the few remaining places of native forests; it's actually considered a rare and endangered plant in California. I do find it interesting how the shape of the tree changes as it ages, from a traditional triangular Christmas tree shape when it's younger to a tall, rounded top shape once they mature.

dwarf mistletoe on Monterey pine ~ 02/11/11 ~ Jacks Peak

western dwarf mistletoe on Monterey pine
Arceuthobium campylopodum on Pinus radiata
CNPS 8th Edition Inventory
Santalaceae (formerly Viscaceae) and Pinaceae

When I saw this I thought it was some kind of insect gall based on the swollen twig area. I figured once I got home, I'd easily be able to search Monterey pine galls and get my answer. However before I even got around to doing that and while I was looking up other plants for Jacks Peak, I noticed a picture that looked very similar to what I saw here. It's a mistletoe! Who knew mistletoes also created gall structures? See and learn something new every day, if I just bother to look.

woodland strawberry ~ 02/11/11 ~ Jacks Peak

woodland strawberry
Fragaria vesca
Rosaceae

I never noticed the proliferation of strawberries at Jacks Peak before. It helps that these bright white flowers caught my eyes. I certainly have never seen the fruit there. I don't know if they get eaten by animals, collected by humans considering it's a popular public park, or rarely produce fruit since it's so shady.

As I was looking for more information, just to learn something new since I've never bothered to look up strawberries before, I was surprised to find there's a second Calflora site out there. The one I use most often, highly recommend, and link to in most of my plant scientific names is Calflora.org. The second one is Calflora.net, which is the personal site of Michael L. Charter and is based out of Southern California. Other than being a little irritated at the similarity of names, (don't know which came first as they both started in 2005), I'm highly impressed by Michael's elaborate website. Can you imagine the time it took him to create that sucker?!?

So, this got me wondering this morning (posted 02/17/11)... what the heck am I doing with this blog? And, why? It started out innocent enough as a casual "I want to learn about the things I see on my hikes." Now, first thing almost every morning (well, after a bathroom visit and a huge cup of tea), while my husband gets his beauty rest, I quietly work on Nature ID. Plus, with any free pockets of time, I'll update or add more posts, many of them backdated far enough that most followers won't even see them. I'll admit to being a bit obsessive. I'm already at 413 labels and 583 posts and I have yet to reach my 2 year blog anniversary (in May). The label lists along the right side of this blog are becoming unwieldy and extraordinarily lengthy (all that scrolling is probably why my wireless mouse eats through so many batteries). At a certain point, I imagine Google's Blogger will complain with site crashes or start charging for hosting. I don't know where this is going or how I want my blog to be in another year. I watch as several other bloggers stop adding new posts or close their accounts entirely and I suspect they simply got burned out - I still really miss Steve Wilson's Blue Jay Barrens blog. However, I do know what I do not want. I do not want to sell anything and am very proud that this is an ad-free blog. And, I do not want to "network" or show off my abysmal nature knowledge - in other words, there's something really freeing in not being the expert and being totally comfortable in saying, "I don't know." I'm relatively anti-social, hence why I like hiking to get away from people and into nature. I'm not on facebook anymore and generally refuse to join nature groups, clubs, and societies. Although, I have met some very nice people online with similar interests. My questions about the future of Nature ID remain unanswered for now.

With that said, I'd love to hear from fellow bloggers on why you blog.