I’ve never grown common guavas—this tree is in my MIL’s yard—so I don’t know if this growth pattern is normal. I don’t see it on any of the images that a quick search pulls up. Part of the flower (a sepal?) persists as the fruit grows, forming a tough ”hood”. Looking at variously-sized fruits on the tree, it seems that this hood stays the same size as the fruit enlarges. Presumably it eventually falls off. What is the purpose of this phenomenon? Is it unique to this tree?
We have a fairly new, almost empty, shopping centre in town (like we needed another one!). I had a bit of a wander through, and noticed this public art out front. It’s comprised of columns of burnt burls of wood. Between some of the lumps are ceramic collars stamped with words like ‘fire’, ‘ash’ and ‘transform’. There’s no plaque, but I’m guessing it’s meant as a reminder of the Woolsey Fire which wreaked such devastation on our area nearly six years ago.
There aren’t many wildflowers out at this time of year, but hardy tarweed colours the slopes.
From the kitchen window, I can see the huge creeping rosemary bush on the hill above the house. While I sip my morning tea, I watch flocks of finches swoop in to eat the flowers for breakfast.
Option 4: remove the plants to make space for something that rodents don’t like to eat. Kale?
After leaving the Field Campus, I spent the night with friends in Sacramento, before making the long drive back home. I’d never seen a yellow-billed magpie before. What a gorgeous bird!
On my last morning at the retreat, I sat beside another unfamiliar plant to nature journal. We had no cell reception there, so no checking iNaturalist, but I’ve since ID’d it as white-veined wintergreen or whitevein shinleaf, Pyrola picta. This perennial herb in the heath family is native to western North America from southwestern Canada to the southwestern United States.
It is not a source of wintergreen oil; that comes from plants in the Gaultheria genus.
Veratrum californicum (California corn lily, white or California false hellebore) is a beautiful but extremely poisonous riparian plant that I encountered in the Sierras. Its steroidal alkaloids can cause serious birth defects in animals such as sheep, horses, and other mammals that graze upon it. I’m guessing pregnant humans shouldn’t munch on it, either.
Wolf lichen is my new favourite lichen. The Klamath Indians in California soaked porcupine quills in a chartreuse extract of Letharia vulpina to dye them yellow; then wove the quills into their basket patterns. The pigment is actually vulpinic acid, which is relatively toxic to meat-eating mammals as well as insects and molluscs (but not toxic to rabbits and mice). It’s been used historically as a poison for wolves and foxes.
Just one of the many new-to-me wonders in the Sierra Nevada.
hashiworks 