Author: Hashi

Phrynosoma blainvillii

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Alli and I explored a back route into Topanga State Park this morning, then hiked the familiar and much-loved Musch Trail. (Who was Musch? I’ll have to ask Suzanne, she’ll probably know.) We spotted a Blainville horned lizard close to where I saw one (my first!) last year. Nice!

Lamiaceae

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Lavender and oregano are both in the same family, Lamiaceae, along with about 7500 other species. This family of flowering plants is commonly known as the mint, deadnettle, or sage family. Many of the plants are aromatic in all parts and include widely used culinary herbs like basil, mint, rosemary, sage, savory, marjoram, and thyme, as well as other medicinal herbs such as catnip, salvia, bee balm, wild dagga, and oriental motherwort.

How many members of this family are growing in your garden?

Linum usitatissimum

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Flax, also known as common flax or linseed, has been cultivated as a food and fiber crop in temperate climates for over 9,000 years.

Linen is made from this plant’s fibrous stems, and the seed’s oil is known as linseed oil. Humans first domesticated flax in the Fertile Crescent region. Use of the crop steadily spread, reaching as far as Switzerland and Germany, China and India, where it was cultivated at least 5,000 years ago. It was grown extensively in ancient Egypt, where the temple walls had paintings of flowering flax, and mummies were embalmed using linen.

The seeds and their oil are highly nutritious, and the oil also has industrial uses. It is often blended with combinations of other oils, resins or solvents as a drying oil finish or varnish in wood finishing, as a pigment binder in oil paints, as a plasticizer and hardener in putty, and in the manufacture of linoleum.

A most useful plant indeed. And pretty!