Mystery Plants
Roger and I headed out to a random trail to do some hiking today. He is quite the trooper as we hiked back nearly a mile back while climbing something like 200 or 300 feet over the course of the hike.
It is a bit late in the season to run into many wildflowers, but we still saw a few that were quite beautiful. Along the nearby Stevens Canyon Road, there were hillsides covered in purple California Poppies. They were fading, but still quite spectacular.
The first picture on this post is actually a “weed” (only a weed because I didn’t plant it) that is growing along our driveway. It is a spectacular flower and the plant, itself, is a pretty neat looking clump of grass-like growth with all those flower stalks sticking out.
The second picture is of a flower that we saw quite commonly once we got above “poison oak” altitude on our hike. On both sides of the lower part of the trail, the ground cover was thick with poison oak and ferns. Interesting juxtaposition. Once we hit a certain altitude, the poison oak and ferns fell away to be replaced by more grass like growth and lots of the pictured flower. Reminds me of very yellow popcorn, for some reason.
We only saw one instance of the purple flower and it was close to the trail head, just below where the poison oak/ferns started. It was actually in the trail. The individual flowers are tiny — about 2x or 3x the size of the head of a pin. I still haven’t figured out how to cajole the camera into taking a really sharp picture of such a subject.
The flowers have this incredibly striking purple color. From a distance of more than a couple of feet, it is like seeing little purple stars against the brown background of the dry California hillside.
In any case, I would like to know the species of these plants as I would gladly add them to my yard or, at least, a close relative that is compatible with our valley climate.
Fun hike. Going to do something like it again tomorrow.