The Matilija Poppies are putting on a lovely show in the Park. Romneya coulteri is native to California and northern Mexico. The plant grows from 2 to 3 metres (6 to 9 feet) tall, with very large flowers that somewhat resemble a fried egg.
The flower is the largest of any California native species. It was nominated as state flower in 1890, but the California poppy won the title in a landslide.
Since the oaks finished flowering, I’ve been checking on the baby acorns at every opportunity. The valley oaks have the lead at this point; they will eventually be much larger than the coast live oak acorns so that’s not surprising. It’s fun to peek among the leaves and see what I can spot — not every oak produces flowers/acorns every year so it’s a bit of a treasure hunt.
Digger bees, although solitary, nest in large aggregations. Each female digs her own tunnel, which can be up to a foot deep and have several branches. Each branch terminates in a chamber where the female lays a single egg, providing it with pollen and nectar collected from flowers. The larvae hatch and consume the stored food, then grow into pupae and then into adult bees, all while underground.
Next spring or early summer the adults will emerge, mate, and do it all over again … Right now we‘re at the mating stage, by the looks of things! I don’t know if they will re-use the existing tunnels or dig new ones. I‘ll keep checking on them.
There are also a few bee flies (possibly tribe Villini) hovering about at ground level. The larval stages of bee flies are predators or parasitoids of the eggs and larvae of other insects. The adult females usually deposit eggs in the vicinity of possible hosts, quite often in the burrows of beetles or wasps/solitary bees. So I’m pretty sure that’s what they’re looking to do! It’s a fly-eat-bee world.
Click to enbiggen.
We’ve all been excited about the digger bees at the Park, but we also have digger wasps actively nesting quite close to the Visitor Center.
Once a year, the docents from Topanga Canyon and Malibu Creek get together for a weekend of camping, learning, and socialising. And here we are, at the 37th Field Ecology Weekend, beside the meadow* in Malibu Creek State Park.
*Location of ‘the hunt’ in the original Planet of the Apes movie.
I had time for a very quick sketch between watering baby oak trees and opening the Visitor Center at noon. I love that huge sycamore. It has multiple bee hives in its hollows, as well as several acorn granaries. It’s a generous tree.
We kicked off the 2023 Junior Ranger program at Malibu Creek State Park today, with my session on plants. We had 23 kids in our target age group (7 to 12 yrs old) plus another 40-odd parents + older/younger kids. Many questions were asked. Many leaves were fondled. I think we all enjoyed ourselves—I know I did!
One enthusiastic young miss informed me that she wants to be a veterinarian. And because she loves animals, she also loves plants, because animals need plants. And we humans need both animals and plants. We are all connected. Yes, wise one, we are.
UPDATE 5.6.23: I incorrectly showed the position of the female flowers. See this post.
It promises to be a great year for acorns around here! Most of the coast live oaks are currently sprouting thousands of yellow fingers, male flowers on their long catkins. Their female counterparts are hard to see, but if you look closely you can find them wedged in the angle between leaf and branch.
California’s oak woodlands sustain higher levels of biodiversity than virtually any other terrestrial ecosystem in the state. More than 300 species of birds, reptiles, amphibians and mammals depend on oak woodlands for food and shelter, and that doesn’t count the many hundred species of insects, spiders, mosses, lichens and fungi.
Like so many other habitats, oak woodlands are under severe threat from development and climate change. But for this year, at least, we can look forward to a healthy acorn crop. Yay!
Our local wild chia (Salvia columbariae) is closely related to commercial chia (Salvia hispanica). It was a favoured food of the Chumash and other Native American peoples, being high in both protein and fat. The seeds were gathered in large quantities, stored and traded, then roasted and ground into flour. The seeds were also used medicinally and ceremonially. It is an annual herb, and is flowering now in the Santa Monica Mountains.
hashiworks 