Oenothera elata (Tall/Hooker’s/Hairy/Western/Marsh Evening Primrose) is a tall biennial native to much of western and central North America, with one or more upright stems bearing a profusion of large bright yellow flowers, 3 in (7 cm) across. I was intrigued to see a bee burrowing deep into the flower’s throat, rather than gathering pollen from the prominent stamens and pistil.
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.
We had fun exploring the Sierra Nevada Field Campus site from a cross-sectional point of view.
One of the goals for my time in the mountains was to learn to reliably identify a handful of alpine trees. Here are three that I got to know (some more intimately than others).
Our nature journal club met at Charmlee Wilderness Park last Sunday; a good time was had by all. The rattlesnake in the bathroom was a highlight!
I had a lovely morning at the estuary with the Channel Islands Nature Journalers. The fish noticed the osprey before I did!
Asclepias eriocarpa is native to California and adjacent parts of Nevada and Baja California. It grows in many habitat types such as rocky hillsides, woods, deserts, and especially dry areas. Along with other milkweeds, woollypod is vital to the survival of the monarch butterfly, as well as being a great nectar source for a range of beneficial insects.
Milkweeds contain cardiac glycosides, naturally occurring drugs that increase the force of heart contraction and have been used to treat heart conditions. The cardiac glycosides are potentially poisonous to humans, and are definitely toxic to dogs, cats, and grazing animals. So maybe don’t plant it in your horse paddock.
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