#minamound

[birdsy-purplefishes]

Now back to #CaliforniaNativePlants posting! I blasphemed the other day posting a couple of my cultivated exotic flowers during #CaliforniaNativePlantWeek, but in my defense that’s every week for me. Anyway… I got to go on another trip to a vernal pool site! @friendsofpqcanyon hosted a guided walk around their Lopez Ridge vernal pool preserve which was wonderful. 1. #DowningiaCuspidata, a vernal pool obligate also known as #ToothedCalicoflower. Very photogenic. 2. This photo just goes to show the extremes of this environment. There are prickly pear cacti (Opuntia sp., I’m guessing littoralis?) growing in between the #vernalpools full of downingia. This species can handle being drenched when it’s cool as long as they’re bone dry in the summer, and that’s exactly how it is here. A clay sponge full of puddles and then it’s like a bone-dry adobe brick. #MediterraneanClimate! 3. Zooming out more, we can sort of see a ground-level view of a #minamound. See that little island of chaparral shrubs in the center with the taller grass around the edges? That’s a mound. The #mimamounds in Southern California are thought to be the work of hundreds of generations of gophers trying to not get flooded out. You can see them in satellite [imagery & they look kind of like b. wrap. 4. Zooming further out you can see #LastheniaGracilis / #CommonGoldfields next to that vernal pool. They need open spaces without a lot of tall grasses and other plant shading them out. The areas around the vernal pools work well for that. You can also see the vernal pools’ natural predator, the Housing Development. 5. There are many species of lasthenia and one part of telling them apart is looking at the phyllaries, the leafy things at the base of the flower head. Somebody made a good YT video about how to distinguish between the species in San Diego County that I often have to refer back to. 6. A nice patch of goldfields and owl’s clover (Castilleja sp.) and more of that mima mound/vernal pool complex topography that leaves grassy openings. Good stuff. [CAPTION TOO LONG. SEE COMMENTS.] (at Friends of Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve) https://www.instagram.com/p/CrJmCKvuZj0/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#californianativeplants #californianativeplantweek #downingiacuspidata #toothedcalicoflower #vernalpools #mediterraneanclimate #minamound #mimamounds #lastheniagracilis #commongoldfields