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It was quite the heroic effort and we thank them whole-heartedly for their work doing trail repair! And, until just now, I'd never noticed the fine print on the trailhead marker saying that they'd adopted this trail.
We were in search of spring wildflowers and the first of the smiling faces we encountered were the Coast Sun Cups. Quite an auspicious start!
Actually, we encountered a number of other flowers, but I was targeting wildflowers that are native to California and there are hoards of non-native, alien, and otherwise invasive plants abounding. The Friends of Edgewood (link above) work very hard at organizing folks to come out and work at eradicating said invasives from Edgewood. It's definitely an uphill battle.
The next of the flowers we encountered were the lupines (Miniature or Douglas's, I'm not sure), but there were lots of them this year. (As in, way more than last year.)
Now that I think of it, I remember seeing plenty of Bush Lupine a-bloomin' last year, but very little of the smaller, fields-of variety. Another blueish flower we encountered is known as Blue Dicks.
Yes, yes, I know. It sounds like a social disease, like the English pudding "Spotted Dick." But, really, the name comes from its botanical name, Dichelostemma pulchellum. They, too, aren't as abundant this year as they were last year.
This next flower got me. It looks like the Blue Dicks, but white instead of blue. I believe it's a White Hyacinth.
I didn't see any of the next flower last year and very few of them this year, but at least they *were* there. They're called Tidy Tips, presumably for the tidy white tips on the bright yellow petals.
We also saw miscellaneous butterflies on our hike including this California Ringlet.
In addition to the Ringlet, we kept seeing speckled orange butterflies streaking by at warp speed with nary a pause. I learned this morning (via the Gardening With Natives group mailing list!) that these are the Painted Lady butterflies on their northward migration. I had seen oodles of butterflies (as in, great, unavoidable clouds of them) down in Anza-Borrego a couple of weeks ago, not knowing what they were. I'm sure the Jeep grille ate a number of them. *sigh*
As with most wooded areas, there are downed trees and limbs that are left for nature to deal with. I don't know from fungi, but I thought this was an interesting looking tree fungus.
Of course, we also encountered the occasional bird along the trail. There was an Oregon Junco (or Oregon form of the Dark-Eyed Junco, if you prefer) hunting seeds on the side of the trail.
If I recall, there are two or three sub-species of these little guys, but I don't recall which is which. One has a pinkish beak, the other(s) yellow. This seems to be one of the yellow-beaked flavor.
One of the pretty little flowers that I saw very few of last year, but actual fields of this year, is the so-called Blue-Eyed Grass.
It's not actually a grass, but in the iris family. When it's not blooming, it does resemble a rather untidy, coarse grass. But the flowers are awfully pretty, don't you think?
Another denizen we came upon during our hike was our State Mollusk: The Banana Slug!
He's seen here in the middle of the trail, among young poppies that are not likely to last much longer due to foot traffic.
It's getting to be rather late in the season for a dryish place like Edgewood for Miner's Lettuce to be growing, but there it was. And, yes, it's edible.
We also spotted a plant that looks remarkably like a grapevine, but not quite right. A botanist happened along (no, really!) and ID'd it for us as Manroot.
The Manroot is so named because it has a large, tuberous root shaped like a man. It's of the cucumber family, but the local native species aren't edible. Bummer.
As I mentioned earlier, there are plenty of "alien species" in the park. Here's another one: The Scarlet Pimpernel. Yes, yes. The one the novel, movie, and TV series are named for.
I'm happy to report that the Sticky Monkeyflowers are starting to bloom!
The ones in the wild are a little the worse for wear, but the ones in my garden are going completely nuts. (I'll post new photos soon.)
We saw a few specimens of Purple Nightshade (or Blue Witch, if you prefer).
I'm used to seeing ceanothus (California Lilac) with blue flowers, and I've see ceanothus with white flowers, but I thought the white ones were "fiddled with" by horticulturists to get the white. But NO! The big, white-flowered large shrub/small trees I was seeing last year have been identified as white-flowering ceanothus (a.k.a., Buckthorn). (Same botanist. Really!)
Yet another flower that was in abundance last year, but minimally represented this year is Fremont's Camas.
It's related to the Death Camas (and is just as poisonous) and is named after *that* Fremont.
While the fields weren't dense with flowers, they made for some nice meadows of flowers. Here we have a mix of California Poppies and Cream Cups (among other things that I couldn't ID from the trail).
Here's a closer look at a Cream Cup.
I mentioned the California Ringlet and Painted Lady Butterflies earlier. We also saw the Acmon Blue Butterfly (closed and open).
And there were other birds besides the Oregon Junco. We caught sight of a hummingbird (Anna's, I think) and a Scrub Jay.
And, finally, the object of our quest... It sounds like another denizen of the woods, but it's actually a wildflower: The Purple Mouse Ears! (Mimulus douglasii)
Success! It was a beautiful day -- not too warm, not too cool, not too breezy. We saw many wonderful sights and took too many pictures. And we met interesting people along the way.
Oh, that botanist we encountered along the way. Well that was the well-known Toni Corelli! She was leading a group of docents-in-training. Lucky docents! (I'm so jealous!)
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