Readers’ wildlife photos

Reader Robert Lang, physicist and origami master, has contributed two batches of photos, and I’ll show one today. (I just missed being able to get on a cruise to the Arctic, featuring Richard Dawkins and with several of my friends like Robert, so I’m bummed.) At any rate, Robert’s words are indented and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them,

Wildflowers 1/2

Springtime in Southern California is when the hills come alive with life. We have had two good years of winter rains but the first few months of 2024 were coolish. In April, we began to see warm afternoons, and this brought out a burst of wildflower blooms from many species.

It didn’t get a lot of press, but on May 2, Joe Biden announced the expansion of the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument—it now begins about 20 feet from my studio window and I can walk out my back door to get onto a network of trails. The trails range from deep, forested canyons to thickets of mountainside chapparal and rocky exposed ridges; one of my favorite afternoon routes goes through all three terrains, which offers a wide variety of wildflowers at peak season. Most of the pictures in this collection and the next were taken (with an iPhone, so the quality varies) during a single 3-hour ramble.

A note on IDs: I am even less expert in wildflowers than I am in animal life, so I am relying on iNaturalist for most of these IDs. Corrections and clarifications welcome!

Baby blue eyes (Nemophila menziesii) has tiny flowers and because of its low growth is easily overlooked, but I find them lovely:

Blue blossom ceanothus (Ceanothus thyrsiflorus) is a common shrub of the chapparal. On the day I hiked, the northwest side of Millard Canyon was covered in its lavender blooms:

Chaparral whitethorn (Ceanothus leucodermis) is another species of Ceanothus with similar flowers as blueblossom but is easily distinguishable by its pale branches and vicious long thorns; at higher elevations, it’s one of the dominant shrubs of the chaparral and its thickets are impenetrable (unless you’re willing to spill some blood):

Canterbury bells (Phacelia minor) is often findable along the edges of trails; its deep purple blooms, about 2–3 cm long and similar length, are distinctive with their bell-shaped base:

Clearwater cryptantha (Cryptantha intermedia) is another easily overlooked flower with tiny (~1 cm) blooms and low growth form:

Crofton weed (Ageratina adenophora) is well named as a “weed;” it is an invasive plant that chokes many small streams in canyon bottoms. Every few years a flash flood will clear out the lot, making the stream hikeable for several months, but then the invaders come crowding in again:

This plant had the tiniest flowers, only about 0.5 cm across. iNaturalist only narrows it down to tribe Cynoglosseae, in family Boraginaceae (which makes it a relative of Clearwater cryptantha); any further ID would be most welcome:

iNat identifies this as a Delphinium, but doesn’t narrow down the species:

Gum rock-rose (Cistus ladanifer) is an import from the Mediterranean region, which can be found in areas that were once developed (e.g., the Echo Peak ruins and along the Mount Lowe Roadway above Altadena). The big, showy flowers come in two forms: plain white, which somewhat resemble those of the native Matillija poppy (Romneya coulteri), but they can be distinguished by checking the petals: four petals for poppies, fivefold symmetry for the rock-rose:

More commonly, though, the Gum rock-rose flowers are decorated with maroon dots, which makes the ID unmistakable:

Next: more wildflowers.