Field Trips Log
February 2005
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Today's excursion was just a quick one to a location only about ten miles from my house, and was inspired by my friend Jane Strong who told me of finding Bowlesia incana there in bloom recently. I had wanted to see bowlesia ever since I got my first copy of Milt McAuley's Wildflowers of the Santa Monica Mountains. Tom Chester had also reported it from the Santa Rosa Plateau, but South Hills Park in Glendora was a lot closer, and besides, I had never been there before. The park is at the end of East Mauna Loa St. east of Glendora Ave.
not far north of the 210 freeway, and there is a sign and a small gravelled
parking area. The trailhead is adjacent to a pair of trails that fork
left and right behind a children's play structure. According to Jane's
instructions, I was to go left. The trail switchbacks up a fairly steep
densely-vegetated slope through coast live oaks, hollyleaf redberry,
toyon and elderberry. Golden current was blooming profusely as was wild
cucumber. I had to be careful not to brush against the prolific poison
oak that lined the trail in places. I noted sagebrush, horehound, bedstraw
and masses and masses of blooming chickweed. Some sticky monkeyflower
came into view, and then suddenly it seemed that I was in a littleleaf
redberry thicket with the shrubs absolutely covered with tiny blooms.
A large green shrub appeared on the left and I thought at first that
it was sugarbush, but then I noticed that it was in bloom, and surprisingly
was lemonadeberry, something that is not commonly seen this far away
from the coast. When I saw the large round leaves of southern miner's
lettuce and pacific sanicle just starting to bloom, I knew I was where
I should start looking for the bowlesia. It's very difficult to find
something when you don't know where it is and you don't have a mental
image of it, and after fifteen minutes of fruitless searching I was
growing frustrated. One final note is that there are nettles along parts of this trail so be careful where you put your hands. |
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NOTE: The next few reports are going to be of necessity fairly brief, not only because most of these trips either were fairly brief themselves or didn't amount to much botanically, but also because I have gotten behind in writing up the reports and don't have time to do more with them. In some cases they may just be a quick mention of where I went and a few notable species that were seen. January and a good part of February were basically washed out by the tremendous rains we have had in Southern California (49" at my house since early December!), rains which we have prayed for but which have unfortunately played havoc with roads and trails, many of which have been damaged and/or closed. The Santa Rosa Plateau was closed for much of this time. The Chantry Flats Road was severely damaged and is likely to remain closed for a significant time period. I did make a quick trip between storms to Anza-Borrego Palm Canyon toward the end of February, but it was a cold, windy, rain-threatening kind of day, and I only spent a short time there. I did ascertain that the Newberry's velvet mallow which I wanted to get in bloom still had its flowers closed, but that was probably because of the heavy ovrercast. I also made a quick trip out to the Living Desert, where there was surprisingly little in the way of annuals making an appearance. I took advantage of this down time to create a page on Trees
of Southern California which displays photos of the bark of all
the coniferous, deciduous and evergreen broadleaf trees which are common
here, using photographs I already had and supplementing them with ones
taken at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden. |