Rising from the ashes

 

I've been reading Rebecca Solnit's A Paradise Built in Hell, and the spirit of that book became very real as I took my first two hikes into the ashen earth left behind by last summer's wildfires that devastated so much of Plumas County. The first three photos here were taken on the first day of Spring on a hillside about Frenchman Lake. The fire did such a thorough job of eliminating underbrush that it was easy for Greg and me to walk into the area without trails. We were in the vicinity of 6,000 feet of altitude and saw mostly dead trees. Despite the incredible views of Dixie Mountain and mountains southward towards Babbitt Peak, I reverted to my well-developed habit of looking at the ground. It paid off when I started spotting flowers blooming. These three reminded me of Buttercups or Anemones, but I still haven't identified them. 

 

A week earlier, we hiked around on an ashen slope above Oakland Camp near Quincy. At around 4,000 feet we saw the first of several species of yellow violets that populate this area. This one appears to be Viola purpurea, or the Mountain Violet. Then nearby we spotted the early leaves of what will be the next yellow species to bloom, Viola sheltonii, or the Fan Violet. On a sunny, south-facing slope, they are taking up sunlight all day long and blooming ahead of their kind down around Quincy 1,000 feet below.

While the Dixie Fire was burning, it seemed like Hell, but soon there will be a paradise of blooming wildflowers as the mountains and nearby communities begin their slow recovery.

Draba and friends

 

I went back to the split-rail fence where yesterday I photographed Spring Whitlow Grass, known to botanists as Draba verna, to try to get better pictures of it as well as the Filaree. Today there seemed to be millions of Draba blooming and a few dozen new Filaree where yesterday I only found two.  I also did a little research and found that there are over 400 species of Draba world-wide. According to my old Peterson's guide there are at least six species in California, and D. verna is the only one with split-ended petals. I looked back to old blogposts where I had mentioned Spring Whitlow Grass soon after discovering what it was. Check my blog for April 3, 2013, titled All in the Neighborhood, and the one on March 17, 2016, titled All Fired Up Again. Based on those old blogs, I thought it would be a few more weeks before the Henbit Dead Nettle would bloom. I was quite excited to find several patches of it bloomed today for the first time!

The above cluster of three beauties took my breath away. These are all very small flowers so it's easy to overlook them. The Draba blossoms in the foreground are around 1/3" in diameter. It's worth getting down on hands and knees for a closer look. I'll write more about the Henbit in a later post, but for now - it's a member of the mint family.

The above photo is about the best one I got to show off the structure of the flower and those petals with split ends. Below, I'm holding one I picked to better show off a seed.

This last photo shows the relative size of the blossoms of Filaree and Draba. Based on my memory of the Filaree which was a little over a half inch in diameter, I need to revise my estimate of the size of the Draba. Make that around 1/5 of an inch. It's great to see all three species within a small area. They will soon be joined by several other tiny species.

A sudden awareness of seasonal change

My second day back on the BLOG, and my skills are rusty. These photos are are in the reverse order of my intention, so I'll sort of tell my story backwards. 

We had a huge snow storm around Christmas (third photo down) and it upset many of our plans including a deck project that started when the weather forecast was favorable. The biggest single night of snow since we moved here 15 years ago. Over a week ago, I saw the willows along Spanish Creek Road blooming (photo below). That was the first sign of spring that caught my attention, but I didn't expect much change in the month of February.

This morning as I walked past the split-rail fence by the practice football field at FRC, I noticed a kind of white foam under foot (third photo below). Between the green grass and the pavement, one can see a grayish area of ground beneath the fence that delineates the "disturbed ground" where weeds tend to flourish. I kneeled down to inspect the aforementioned 'foam" bottom photo) and it turned out to be one of my favorites, usually always the first "wildflower" I see each spring - Spring Whitlow Grass, or Draba. It's a weed only in the sense that it's not a native of this area. But neither am I, nor are most of you. So, Draba is no more a weed than you or I - although the Native Plant Society might beg to differ. [I've had some tense discussions about Daisies, for instance.] At any rate, I was in too much of a hurry and got a less than professional photo with my phone. Will give Draba a better treatment with my Nikon in a future post.

As soon as I identified Draba I thought Filaree is soon to follow, and I stared intensely as I walked, as if to force one to bloom.  Sure enough, within the next ten steps I spotted the pair in the photo below. One of my favorites, also technically a weed. More about Filaree, AKA Stork's Bill, in later posts.

When I got to the end of the fencerow, I took one last photo, a remnant of last fall - top photo in this series - the Cat-o-nine-tails. They, along with Mullein and Teasel, often persist for several season after they have died. Sounds like a plan.

 

 I'm back! - I think....

It's been over a year since I last posted. When my college classes had to go online in response to the arrival of COVID19, I found the nature-walking spirit that inspired this blog for nearly 15 years to have evaporated. When the Spring of 2021 arrived, I got excited about nature walks with my camera and Moleskeine journals and started building an archive of photos that has continued to this day, but I couldn't bring my self to go online and share my findings with the world - that is, my small world of known followers, many of whom would stop me on the streets and trails and ask - when are you going to resume the blog? I started making note in my written journal "need to resurrect blog," but it never happened. That is, until now. The stimulus that caught me by surprise was the little piece of wood pictured here. On a recent frigid morning the Gnome spoke to me. He's been on our front porch the 15 years we've lived in this house, and in our possession for 8 years before that. I wish I could remember the lady who gave it to me. She was the artistic mother of one of my high school students.

     The blog might be a bit "sketchy" for a while. I'm out of practice. In fact, if it were not for available tech support from my son, I probably wouldn't have dared to resume. I probably post a mix of archived photos of spring observations - by way of urging Spring to hurry up and get here - and current observations made on my nearly daily nature walks. For the past six months my walks have been almost entirely here in American Valley. Until tomorrow....

The One that Didn't Get Away

 Hiking with my son on a trail on My. Hough, I saw two animals that got my attention.  The first was the biggest Mule Dee buck that either of us had ever seen.  For a second, I wondered if it was an Elk.

But the deer was too quick and well-hidden for me to get a good photo - or ANY photo. A few minutes later, I tipped over a piece of Incense Cedar bark, and the above Fence Lizard emerged, and instantly froze.. I took several photos, beginning from about four feet away, but he never took off, so I got closer and closer until  for the above photo I was within a foot. Not bad for an iPhone image under a hot and glaring sun. I could hardly see what I got on the tiny screen, then appreciated my luck when I got home and looked at it on  my laptop screen.  Enjoy. Click on the photo for a closer view.

Amazing Tiny Things

 Click on each photo to see close-up. I wasn't even in a photography mood yesterday when I was meandering around Oakland Feather River Camp, but who could resist these little ornaments hanging from a leaf of the Narrowleaf Milkweed, Asclepias fscicularis? It turn out they are the eggs of the Green Lacewing. Their relationship to the plant and the aphids that also frequent this plant, is quite fascinating, as is the process of depositing the eggs in the first place. I leave it to the curious reader to find out more. These milkweeds are perenniels, and I try to follow them through their annual cycle every summer.  I manage to find something new nearly every time.  For instance...

this amazingly cute little spider.  She's all of a quarter inch long, and kept going to the backside of the stem every time I approached with the camera.  I must have more stamina because she eventually quit trying to dodge my approach and I got this shot from about 9 inches away. Haven't found this particular one in my bug manuals or online, but I suspect it's one of the jumping spiders, Family Salticidae.I

The Morning After, Part III

The Trail Plant, Adenocaulon bicolor, is a hard one to photograph. The intriguing feature to those without a hand lens is the bi-colored leaves, green on top and a kind of blue grey underneath. When walking through a dense cover of them, we tend to cause a certain fraction of them to turn upside down, leaving a trail, so to speak. However, the trail only lasts a few moments, so don't count on
for finding your way back to wherever your hike started.

The feature that is difficult to photograph, at least with the equipment I have, is the tiny flowers.  Each flower, only about 1/8" in diameter, is actually a small cluster of even smaller flowers that are  like miniature daisies, that is, composites.

The Yellow Water Buttercup is an intriguing species of Ranunculus.  The flowers are similar to those of many other buttercup species - yellow and cup-like.  The leaves, however, can vary greatly according to the specific habitat in which they are found. The one above was photographed in what is supposed to be a lawn, but was close enough to a seasonal ditch that there was undoubtedly water close to the surface, even in the current dry condition. Nearby there are many blooming in a ditch where the water is still slowly flowing. The leaves on those are much more sub-divided, more or less resembling ferns.I recommend reading the Wikipedia article on this fascinating species.

Bindweed, Convolvulus arvense, is in the Morning Glory family and, in fact, is usually called Orchard Morning Glory by those who like it. Although treated as an invasive weed, it beautifies many of our roadsides - until the mowers or poison trucks come along.

In many places I visit, the Crimson Columbine, Aquilegia formosa, is having a very good summer, although the one above was a solitary specimen in a large area of dry forest in the FRC camppus.

When I first saw several of these energetic white butterflies hopping from flower to flower by the college parking lot, I thought they were Cabbage Whites, or Pieris rapae, because I see them every day in my front yard only a mile or so from the college. However, the enlarged view on my computer screen convinced me they are Pine Whites, or Neophasia menapia. I don't own a comprehensive butterfly field guide, so I welcome corrections from any Lepidopterists who might be reading this.

My favorite photo experience of the day was watching many Western Tiger Swallowtails flying from blossom to blossom of the California Thistle, Cirsium occidentale.

I finish this three=part series on my short hike following the day I made the  more difficult hike up Spanish Peak. On the nature trail by the FRC campus there is one of the best patches of Sierra Goosberries, Ribes roezlii, that I've ever seen.  Definitely enough for a couple of pies or jars of jam within a 10-yard radius.