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.