In a shaded corner of our garden, I’ve tucked a gathering of diverse ferns and nestled the shiitake log among them (still no mushrooms, but it’s only been four months.)
ribbon and nest
Tag: plants
Bulbine frutescens
I’m learning a lot from Let’s Botanize. This week: RAM and SAM.
hairy armpits
you’re so vein
I just bought this cool book, Let’s Botanize by Ben Goulet-Scott and Jacob S. Suissa. 101 Ways to Connect with Plants? Yes please! The very first prompt has me jonesing for a microscope.
In working on this page, I learned the botanist’s terms for the upper- and under-side of a leaf. Adaxial and abaxial. How to remember which is which? Abaxial includes B for Bottom.
Uresiphita reversalis
Phacelia cicutaria
It’s the first time I’ve ever looked closely at Phacelia seed structures. They are delicate and beautiful.
This California native is clearly a fire-follower: Professors Carol and Jerry Baskin of the University of Kentucky noted a 27% increase in germination as compared to control when treated with aqueous extracts of charred wood, or the charred wood itself. Cool!
Claytonia perfoliata
in a’s garden
on a log
A dying tree supports so much life—insects, lichen, fungi, bacteria, reptiles, plants, small mammals. I sat by this log and recorded a few of the organisms I could easily see.
at the beach
I went to Ormond Beach in Oxnard with the Channel Islands Nature Journalers. It’s an interesting place, a little hard to get to, bounded by a port, a Naval Air Station, a power plant, and a superfund* site—a former metal smelter—that is high in aluminum, magnesium, and other metals. Some of the waste contains radioactive thorium and radium.
Sounds yucky, but because of its lack of appeal to the beach-going public, it’s a great birding site! There’s a protected lagoon and wetlands, and more shorebird species are known to use Ormond Beach than any other site in Ventura County. Two endangered species, the Western Snowy Plover and the California Least Tern, nest there. We went with a guide from Audubon, so it was primarily a bird-watching event, but as usual, the plants called my name.
*I learned why highly polluted locations are called superfund sites. It’s because that’s the amount of money that is needed to clean them up. Check here to see if you have one near you (US only).
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