I joined a group of dedicated CNPSers for my first outing of the year to get a glimpse of an area I had never been to before. The group was led by such luminaries as Mickey Long, Jane Strong and Cliff McLean, and we walked down a bike path that skirts the trash-clogged Rio Hondo River and along a grassy field to some sandy flats. Naturally many of the species that are present here are non-native ones but there were some interesting natives as well, including surprisingly a couple that I had never encountered before. As I often do, I went back a few days later and poked around on my own and found a few more things that we hadn't seen before. The constant whining and buzzing of model aircraft being flown nearby was an irritant. Believe it or not, this was the first field outing I have made this year because I have been working on my Southern African eponym plant dictionary ever since returning from South Africa last fall. The symbol ^ next to the common name indicates a taxon that was new to me when I photographed it on this field trip, and an asterisk is for a non-native species. Thanks to Tom Chester for the identification based on a collected sample of the Camissoniopsis lewisii, to Hartmut Wisch for the identification of the ladybug, and to Mickey Long for the identification of the lizard.

Jimsonweed *^
Datura stramonium
Solanaceae

Bird's eye gilia
Gilia tricolor ssp. diffusa
Polemoniaceae
[Named for Filippo Luigi Gilii, 1756-1821]

Bur-chervil, Burr chervil *
Anthriscus caucalis
Apiaceae

Black cottonwood
Populus trichocarpa
Salicaceae

Chaparral gilia
Gilia angelensis
Polemoniaceae