Encelia californica is native to southern California and Baja California, where it’s a member of the coastal sage plant community. It’s a bushy, sprawling shrub reaching between one half and 1.5 meters in height. The solitary flower heads are daisy-like, and it blooms from February to June, attracting butterflies, bees, and other insects.
It’s often planted to start a native garden, and then replaced with longer-lived shrubs over time. It can help jumpstart an area to change the soil ecology to help mazanitas and ceanothus plants.
Our block is covered with bush sunflowers, and they’ve just begun to bloom. Yay! 🌻
Several of the coast live oaks along High Road in Malibu Creek State Park broke and toppled in the recent storms. I hung out with one of them for a while this afternoon, enjoying its glowing heart.
Leucadendron (commonly called cone-bush) is a genus endemic to South Africa. The flowers are produced in dense inflorescences at the branch tips; plants are dioecious, with separate male and female plants. The seed heads of Leucadendron are woody cone-like structures, giving rise to their common name.
I returned to my favourite MCSP trail for the first time in about six months. I wanted to see how it was handling all the rain, and the answer is .. beautifully! The many tributaries are gushing, the mosses are glowing neon, and the manzanitas are blanketing the woodland floor in white blossoms.
There used to be three buddhas out on the trails, placed by locals who respectfully use this undeveloped private land to exercise themselves and their dogs. The statues attract offerings of pretty rocks, flowers, and other treasures. Two of the statues were removed by the land-owner, but the smallest one remains.
The American kestrel (Falco sparverius), also called the sparrow hawk, is the smallest and most common falcon in North America. They usually hunt by perching and scanning the ground for prey to ambush – that’s what I saw this one doing –though they also hunt from the air. Diet typically consists of grasshoppers and other insects, lizards, mice, and small birds (e.g. sparrows). American kestrels occupy habitats ranging from deserts and grasslands to alpine meadows.
I ventured to the eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains for today’s hike. I consider Griffith Park to be a bit of a crown jewel in the metropolis of Los Angeles. With over 4210 acres (1703 ha) of both natural terrain and landscaped parkland, it’s one of the largest municipal parks with urban wilderness areas in the United States.
Most of the land was purchased in 1882 by Griffith J. Griffith, who made his fortune in gold mine speculation. In 1896, he bequeathed it as a Christmas gift to the people of Los Angeles to be used as parkland.
“It must be made a place of recreation and rest for the masses, a resort for the rank and file, for the plain people,” Griffith said on that occasion. “I consider it my obligation to make Los Angeles a happier, cleaner, and finer city. I wish to pay my debt of duty in this way to the community in which I have prospered.”
So noble, right? But Griffith Griffith was not exactly an all-round good guy. He shot his wife in the head in a Santa Monica hotel room (she survived) and at the trial it was revealed that he was not, in fact, a teetotaller but a secret drunk with paranoid delusions. He was deemed to be suffering from “alcoholic insanity” and so served less than two years in jail. He went on to die of liver disease in 1919.
Be that as it may … as a member of “the rank and file, the plain people”, I am very grateful for Griffith Park. While I would never describe LA as a happy, clean or fine city, I have to say that the Park tilts things a little more in that direction.
Griffith J. Griffith, San Quentin State Prison. Public Domain.
