santa ysabel open space preserve

April 30, 2009 James 5 Comments

A trip to the town of Santa Ysabel in the spring is for me like stepping into a time machine in a couple of different ways. In the first most obvious sense, this little town in the foothills of San Diego County appears to be pickled in some earlier though indefinite time period. A couple buildings have painted facades straight out of 1930s Walker Evans photographs, while others look like straightforward roadside commercial architecture rescued from the 1960s.

Time travel also comes to my mind when I look at the surrounding countryside. Plants that stopped blooming a month ago in my neighborhood canyons are just coming online up here at 3000 feet. Some of this feels like February back home.

Still, even though it contains many familiar plants, this is a very different ecosystem. There are dozens of plants I’d never see back down closer to sea level, and that’s what brought me to Santa Ysabel last weekend.

The town serves as gateway to the Santa Ysabel Open Space Preserve, 5025 acres of foothills and active ranch lands set near the headwaters of the San Diego River.

Botanist Jerilyn Hirshberg led the intense day of botanizing which began with the handing out of sheets of paper listing 203 plants that we stood a good chance of seeing that day.

Be prepared. If you go an an outing looking at all the plant species in an area, expect to spend a certain amount of time huddled together and bent over as you look at some of the smallest of the small plants. People typically call them “belly flowers.” But Jeri used a word that I’d never heard before (and I think was one she’d made up): “dinkophytes”–with “dinko” as in “dinky plants.”

A biologist on the trip complained several times, “That’s not a real word!” But I loved it so much that I hereby grant it official word status and encourage all of you to begin using it.

In the end we didn’t see all 203 plants on the list, but the group found some bonuses that weren’t on it. Here are just a few of them, a couple of which have made it into the garden world.

Johnny jump up, or California golden violet (Viola pedunculata). Perky name, perky plant.

Grape soda lupine (Lupinus excubitus ssp. austromontanus). Yes, it does have a distinct—but delicate—concord grape fragrance, though it’s almost insulting to call the scent ”grape soda.” (Would you describe a flower by saying that it smells like artificially rose-scented air freshener?) The shrub is a pleasant mound of silvery leaves, but the towering spikes make it truly gorgeous this time of year.

California milkweed (Asclepias californica). The clusters of vivid wine blooms are striking. What makes this milkweed really remarkable is that it’s covered with so many soft hairs that it’s hard not to touch it. Kay, the trip organizer, thought it was like handling a cloud. Good description.

This plant hosts the local population of the monarch butterfly. Before you go off and plant this milkweed in hopes of attracting them to your garden, however, it’s worth reading some advice from the Las Pilitas Nursery site: “The alkaloids associated with this milkweed and other milkweeds give the butterflies that feed on it protection. Alkaloids from the wrong milkweed (South American, Mexican, etc.) can expose the butterflies to predation. If the monarch or other butterfly has not evolved with the milkweed they may have limited tolerance for the particular alkaloid of the plant species. The California flyway runs from Baja to Canada, it does not include Mexico proper nor Central America. If you live in Chicago [which is part of the pathway of the monarchs that migrate to mainland Mexico] you can plant Mexican species (Asclepias mexicana) or Asclepias tuberosa, don’t plant our species.”

Scarlet bugler (Penstemon centranthifolius).

One of the botanical highlights centered on this little plant, the hill star (Lithophragma heterophylla), closely related to our very prolific woodland star. Though fairly common to the north, this stand of hill stars formed the only currently known population in San Diego County.

The idea of a county is entirely a human construct, but still I thought that was a pretty cool way to end the trip, seeing the only location of a plant in my local human construct.

To end this post, here are just a few more pictures of the hillsides of the preserve, studded with at least five different species and natural hybrids of oaks…

gardening, photography

camera oops

April 26, 2009 James 7 Comments

Have you ever made a mistake while using a camera and ended up liking the “bad” photo best?

I had borrowed John’s digital point and shoot and had aimed the thing at one of the local native plants, a blooming bush poppy, Dendromecon rigida. The camera took forever to focus, and I thought it’d done its thing. But the flash went off as I was moving to put the camera back in my pocket.

The resulting photo combines a blurred rendition of the plant and mulch with just a little bit of subject matter frozen in place by the flash. It’s nothing you’d use to identify the plant, but I like it as a photo…

gardening, landscape design, places

landscaping without plants

April 24, 2009 James 15 Comments

From my desk at work it’s less than a fifteen minute stroll to this viewpoint, which has got to be one of the most famous places to stand in all of modern architecture.

The view is of the central plaza of the Salk Institute of Biological Studies, which architect Louis Kahn designed for his client, polio vaccine pioneer Jonas Salk. The plaza features this simple water feature that pulls your eye towards the water, 400 feet below, and to the horizon and the sky. The materials of the plaza are reduced down to water, travertine marble and the angled concrete walls of the research buildings.

No plants. When Kahn was working on the design he’d had a conversation with Mexican architect Luis Barragán. Kenneth Frampton recounts Barragán’s seminal response in Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture:

“I would not put a tree or blade of grass in this space. This should be a plaza of stone, not a garden.” I [Kahn] looked at Dr. Salk and he at me and we both felt this was deeply right. Feeling our approval, he added joyously, “If you make this a plaza, you will gain a facade–a facade to the sky.”

As much as I love plants, I have to agree that this was the right decision. There’s an unphotographably joyous experience of pure space that settles into your mind as you stand or sit to contemplate the view.

If you can pull your eyes off the horizon–not an easy thing to do–you start to notice, however, that plants do figure in the plaza’s final realization. Immediately to the east are some steps, and planting beds on either side of the steps. As with a lot of modern planting design, the planters feature one kind of plant and one kind only. Considering the planting design was executed many years ago, probably in the late 1960s or early 1970s, long before the current focus on edible landscaping, it’s surprising that the plant of choice was orange trees, at least four dozen of them. (Maybe it has something to do with the environmental ethic that was developing while the Salk was being designed, an ethic that we’re finally rediscovering today.)

Below is a 360-degree panorama from the top of the steps. Just imagine walking west towards the horizon, at dusk, on a calm evening, as the orange trees begin to flower and scent the air.

gardening, my garden

first epipyllums of the season

April 23, 2009 James 6 Comments

There are gardens zones that I consider to be mainly my spaces, and there are others that I consider John’s. The pond/shaded patio area is largely his garden playground, and he has a number of potted plants, including several different kinds of epiphyllums, the orchid cactus.

For a couple months now, we’ve been watching buds develop on one of the epis. The plants aren’t labeled, and there are enough of them that you forget which one is which. As we watched the little buds we had no idea what color the flowers would be. Judging by the sepals on the outside–red, maybe?

Oops. It’s actually a pure white inner flower when it opens. Here you can see the white petals are ringed with red-tinged, yellowish/greenish sepals.

When a plant gets several on them at a time, it would be a traffic-stopper if we had traffic in the back yard… For a cactus, epipyllums are on the wimpy side. Like, you have to squirt water at them every now and then. And they don’t cope well with freezing temperatures. And they like mostly-shaded conditions. Other than that, they’re pretty easy–and spectacular starting about now..

gardening, photography

picture this photo contest

April 22, 2009 James 9 Comments

Gardening Gone Wild is hosting a photo contest for the best image of native plants in a garden setting. Wander down to the links in the comments on their post to see all the excellent ways people use natives in their gardens.

It’s hard for me sit something like this out, so below are my three entries, photos taken in my garden over the last couple of months. (As usual, click to see the larger images.)

I’ve already shared the first two on these pages, so forgive me for reprising them. These are of clumps of blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium bellum) in a totally assorted planting, mixing the natives with veggies (Red Winter red Russian kale, beets, red- and orange-stemmed chard) ornamentals (heliotrope, geum and sages) and an herb (catmint). The planting requires an average amount of watering to keep everybody happy, but it shows how food plants and natives can easily coexist with more gardenesque selections.

(“Gardenesque”–how I love that word. No, I didn’t make it up. I have Noel Kingsbury (with Piet Oudolf) to thank for using it in Designing with Plants. He blogs, too!)

The first is a closeup of the native, the second shows the same bed three weeks later, after the geum started to flower.

The third photo pictures a foundation planting featuring one of the California native rushes, Juncus patens. I have this thing for spikey, architectural plants, and this one fulfills my needs nicely. Most rushes are creatures of wet zones. However, J. patens is one of the most drought-tolerant. These plants are located in the drip line for water off the roof, and they can make it through the summer with minimal added irrigation.

plant profiles, rambles

sphinx moths

April 22, 2009 James 10 Comments

Along with the flowers, spring brings its share of insects. I could do without the ants that are now beginning to explore the interior of the house, but the sphinx moths that started to appear in huge numbers last week are about as cool as any bug out there.

This is the white-lined sphinx moth, Hyles lineata. Although its main range is the American West and northern Mexico, the species can be found all over the US. (Check out the writeup at the terrific Butteryflies and Moths of North America site for more information.)

There are dozens of other sphinx moths, including the adults of the notorious tomato and tobacco hornworms, familiar to almost anyone who’s tried to grow a tomato plant. The caterpillars of the white-lined sphinxes, however, don’t seem to have the reputation for going on the same sort of sustained rampages against our vegetable gardens.

The way these large, muscular insects maneuver and hover over flowers as they feed reminds you of hummingbirds, and in fact they’re also called “hummingbird moths.” As with hummingbirds, they enjoy nectar-rich flowers, such as this Hot Lips sage. You can see these moths feeding during the daylight, but the populations really come out after the sun sets, forming quietly buzzing clouds at dusk or before the sun rises.

In no way do I consider myself an insect photographer. I quickly found out how frustrating it can be to photograph fast-moving moths with a camera that refuses to focus in the dark. These are the only two photos I kept out of a couple dozen tries.

This second image is no stunner, but you can begin to make out the amazing long tongue that the moth uses to lap up the tasty nectar.

If you’re into insect photos done as well as anyone out there can do them, you should take a look at the work of Bob Parks. He was working at San Diego’s Museum of Natural History when I first met him ten or so years ago. I don’t know of anyone as passionate and devoted to bugs and photos of bugs. That passion shows in his technically outstanding and patiently rendered pictures. There’s a nice biographical writeup of him at the SDNHM site.

gardening, places

botanical side trip

April 21, 2009 James 3 Comments

While I was visiting San Diego’s Earth Day celebrations on Sunday, I took a quick detour into Balboa Park’s Botanical Building. It dates back to the 1914-15 Panama Pacific Exposition, and lays claim to being one of the largest lath structures in the world.

It was an odd feeling to leave the sun-drenched celebration of sustainable living outside and shift gears into the shaded, misted, and heavily watered Botanical Building. Humid and tropical, the interior reminded me of the over-watered vision of paradise that many people still think of when they think of California. Palms, cycads, begonias, orchids and other tropicals and subtropicals lazed in the shade or reached for the light dozens of feet overhead.

I usually go to public gardens and keep an eye out for things I’d like to have in my own garden. Gardens are amazingly democratic that way. If you look hard enough, you can often find some of the rarest plants, especially now with the web available to help source them.

In these days of looming water rationing, however, I felt a little queasy that the Botanical Building was showcasing all sorts of water-intensive plants San Diegans are trying not to fixate on so much these days. Our average temperatures enable the growth of these plants, our regular rainfall does not.

As I was thinking about that queasiness, I realized that many of the Balboa Park buildings nearby are museums that are full of unique objects or things that would be so far beyond my means to buy. The resources of these museums are focused on giving the public access to things and ideas they might not ordinarily encounter. I decided to try to think of the Botanical Building that way, as a sort of botanical museum. Although I could probably find many of its plants if I searched hard enough–and a few of them are actually totally common–I decided to try to look at and appreciate the plants as if they were museum objects I didn’t need to own.

And as my indignation started to lift, I started to be appreciative. Wasn’t it great that people in the city have a place where they can go visit some interesting plants but not have to worry about watering and caring for them? And the Botanical Building is free! If people decide to create little pockets of paradise at home, they don’t need to do their whole gardens this way. A little shaded corner could give you a lot of the same sense of coolness and shelter that the Botanical Building does.

In addition to the big lath house, Balboa Park offers a number of other plantings, including two succulent gardens. So it’s not like the park spends all its resources pimping an outdated vision of Southern California. And there’s value in seeing an old-school planting of this sort to help appreciate how local ideas about gardening have shifted.

So…back to my visit. Lots of things were in flower, but I ended up focusing on plants with variegated leaves that were used throughout the building. No forest would have so many variegated plants in so small a space, but this “garden museum” did a nice job in showcasing some of the botanical world’s interesting foliage patterns. Take a look…

(As usual you click on the images to enlarge them, especially if the signs in the thumbnails are too small to read…)

Cyclamen

Iresine herbstii

places

earth day fair

April 20, 2009 James Leave a comment

Yesterday was the big city Earth Day fair here in town at Balboa Park. Buoyed by temperatures in the 80s, tens of thousands of people came out to celebrate.

Getting to the park required some form of travel, which for many people meant participating in a three mile traffic jam to exit at the park. (Just a little bit of irony in people in getting into their internal combustion powered vehicles to celebrate the earth, don’t you think?)

With the main core of Balboa Park dedicated to pedestrians and the fair, parking a car there was pretty impossible. The organizers had arranged for remote parking and shuttles, which seemed to be working well.

I rode my scooter, which made parking in the unused space between cars easy. I give myself a few brownie points for driving something that’s pretty fuel-efficient, though in reality a carload of people in a Hummer would have used about the same amount of gas to get there. I’m trying to get greener, really. (All of you reading this, hold me to it–Guilt works. So does an appeal to my sense of the greater good.)

In the end, though, even on a hot day, the way to get there was on two feet–or two wheels. Cars were barred from entering the core of the park, and there was free valet parking for bicycles. Yeeha!

Once you got there you had your choice of 400-plus booths. Native plant society? Check. Landscape contractors specializing in low-water landscapes? Several. Information on greener residential construction practices (including solar energy)? Or on most of the public natural parklands around the county? Or on converting your car to a purely electric vehicle? Absolutely.

Left: A 1930s (1932?) Rolls Royce that has been turned into a purely electric vehicle.

On such a warm day I felt really sorry for the person in this garbage can costume that was meant to draw attention to city waste issues. But he or she was incredibly perky all the time I watched. Better than the wilted guy in the banana suit nearby.

One of the kid-friendly booths was this hands-on demonstration of paper-making using recycled paper. I watched a girl of probably no more than five staring at the little sheet of paper that she’d just made, like it was the most magical object in the world.

And of course there were booths to buy earthly stuff: water storage systems (a little pricey at over $6 per gallon of capacity), electric bicycles, cool succulents, sandals, teeshirts, kettle corn… Okay, some of the offerings were more opportunistic than they were green, but hey, it’s a festival. The home-made lemonade stand caught my interest, but even by not long after noon, they were sold out. Waaah.

Events like this are interesting to see what’s being pushed as the latest greatest thing, and some of the green construction technologies were pretty big. Fifteen years ago an event like this would have been filled with people demonstrating their double-paned window systems. Yesterday I might have seen one outfit offering a specialized version of insulated glazing. That goes to show how what may have seemed cool and exotic a decade ago can become commonplace–and even part of regulations. It gives me hope that we’re seeing a lot of people working on some of our big problems. And what’s considered a boutique industry this year might be common as dirt in a decade. Solar-electric kettle-corn storage systems, anyone?

Crowds or not, I always enjoy going to Balboa Park. Here are just a few random sights. I’ll post tomorrow on what was going on in the botanical building, seemingly oblivious to the Earth Day happenings.

Always a crowd-pleaser, the wild trunks of the Australian tea tree (Leptospermum laevigatum) were drawing photographers every few minutes. I’ve loved this plant ever since I saw it in the 1970s at the Los Angeles County Arboretum. I might have room for one if I nuke everything else in the back yard…

The park is devoting itself more to California native plants. Here’s a new planting of bush poppy (Dendromecon, probably harfordii) with a groundcover ceonothus.

In my cloistered life a tightly cropped patch of lawn is a pretty exotic sight. And then add lawn bowlers on top of that. Wow. Not things I see every day. The park is always great for keeping my eyes open…

gardening, my garden

from shower to flower

April 19, 2009 James 7 Comments

Earth Day is coming up on Wednesday. What environment-friendly changes will you be trying to make?

Last year we installed a tankless water heater, a move that has saved us at least 30% on our gas bill. But it still takes a while for the heated water to make it to the bathroom. In the past, we let the cold water in the pipes go down the drain until the water got to a proper shower temperature. But now the water is going into a bucket that we’ll use to water the garden. (A prettier–or at least cleaner–bucket not formerly used for pulling weeds and mixing potting soil is next on the agenda…)

The next logical step for water conservation would be to install a gray water system to reuse washwater. Regulations in California have been complex enough so that only 41 households have done it legally in San Diego County, and only 200 state-wide. State senator Alan Lowenthal from Long Beach has introduced a new bill, SB 1258, that would mandate a review of existing codes to make it easier to design and install legal gray water systems, a piece of legislation that is being called the “shower to flower” bill.

It’s a good start, and one worth supporting.

Related reading:
San Diego Union Tribue: New watering source is surfacing (March 23, 2009 article)
Los Angeles Times: A solution to California’s water shortage goes down the drain (April 19, 2009 opinion piece)
The text of SB 1258, marked up with comments and suggestions for further improvements by Oasis Design.

gardening, my garden

dressed to weed

April 17, 2009 James 11 Comments

Sunny and warm: a perfect morning for cats and gardeners. The cat had her chores, mainly to stare at interesting things in the garden, and I had mine.

Task #1 was to deadhead the arctotis (African daisy) that has been blooming for several months. This is the “before” on one plant…

…and the “after” on another. Arctotis goes on blooming regardless of whether it’s been deadheaded or not. But the plants looked like they were winding down for the year, and I was hoping to extend their season a bit.

The plants are attractive, but I thought the bucket of trimmings was pretty cool, too.

Chore #2 was to weed one of the patches of bromeliads that we’d let loose in the back of a raised bed. The plant has rigid spines like teeth on a sharp saw blade, which makes weeding tricky, and forces you to ask yourself, “Do I really want to do this?”

John started on the task and ended up with bloody forearms. Not happy. He went for the pitchfork, thinking we could lift the clumps, weed under them, and then set the clumps back. These are plants with almost no roots, and that would have worked fine.

But I proposed another idea. I have these long cordura motorcycle gauntlets that I use when I ride my scooter when it’s cold out. They protect your hands, but also your forearms. Would those work for the garden, too?

I suited up, first a thick long-sleeved sweatshirt, and then the gauntlets. Okay, it’s not particularly haute couture, and it’s not a look I’d want to inflict on the world. But it worked.

Why all this effort? Well, the flowers are pretty stunning right now in an unrestrained, tropical way. And the plants are surprisingly drought-tolerant.

Weeding around them seems to be the main challenge. But now we’ve got an easy solution…

(Addition, May 9, 2012: Thanks to Kathryn who commented with a probably ID. Tracking down her lead led be to the Florida Council of Bromeliad Societies’ Bromeliad Species Database, where the best fit seems to be Aechmea distichantha v. glaziovii. You have no idea how much it bothers me to have a plant that I don’t know the name of, so it’s one more down, a few dozen in the garden to go…)

[ Lost in the Landscape ]

Monthly Archives: April 2009

santa ysabel open space preserve

camera oops

landscaping without plants

first epipyllums of the season

picture this photo contest

sphinx moths

botanical side trip

earth day fair

from shower to flower

dressed to weed

an artist loosed in a garden