I always forget that nature is the answer to most of my life's problems. This past Sunday I was really depressed-- like, crying at the end of yoga in corpse-pose, depressed. I kind of blame my yoga teacher, she was talking about her father who had passed away last year, and it was father's day... but it is also just the way my brain is. It likes sad things, it is constantly scanning my memories and current thoughts to find sad subjects to cling to. The important point I have to remember, though, is that my brain also LOVES flowers. I think I was a pollinator in a past life, and my soul has this intense attraction to brightly colored petal-landing pads, nectar guides, and sweet scents. The space in my head lights up with a crazy drug-like joy when I see a new species of flower... and luckily, we live in the California Floristic Province, one of the world's biodiversity hotspots. One interesting/difficult group of flowers to identify that I have noticed blooming lately are those in the Phacelia genus. Apparently there are about 200 species worldwide, 13 of which occur in the Santa Monica mountains. I saw three species on Sunday, the first probably the Large flower Phacelia (Phacelia grandiflora, above) at Rocky Oaks Park. The park is tiny but offers gorgeous views of nearby vineyards, and harbored a new -to- me species of wildflower: the purple, tubular Foothill Penstemon (Penstemon heterophyllus, pictured at left). After a quick jaunt around Rocky Oaks, we drove further down Kanan Dume Rd. and parked at the trail-head to the Backbone Trail. There were TONS of heart-leaved penstemon blooming (including a yellow morph), and the fantastic Scarlet larkspur (Delphinium cardinale-- the genus Delphinium is named after the flower's spur-shape, which looks like a dolphin's fin! so cool! Pictured right, and above). Also blooming: slender sunflowers, bush mallow, and other Phacelias (below). On the way home, we saw a field of Farwell-to-Spring flowers (Clarkia bottae). The stigma (the dark pink head of the style, where pollen grains are deposited), is kind of weird-looking, with a dark "x" etched into it. Upon some googling, it seems that this stigma hasn't opened yet, and will unfurl into four parts, as seen here. I love thinking about plant reproduction, because it can get so wild; stigmas are kind of like the plant versions of a woman's cervix-- they are the gateway for plant sperm (pollen) to germinate pollen tubes, and ultimately fertilize ovules. Stigmas can be picky, and help discriminate between pollen from the wrong plant species, or from genetically-similar pollen (which would promote inbreeding). These stigma behaviors are one of several traits called self-incompatibility mechanisms. Plants are awesome and crazy!
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AuthorI like nature! And hiking, and taking pictures, especially of nature. Archives
September 2014
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