California Goldfield

Posted on February 21, 2025 by tspuckler

It was hard not to notice this wildflower while travelling around the Las Vegas area – in some cases, it was growing right along the edge of the road.

This species is native to a large part of California, Oregon and surrounding areas, where it is a very common member of the flora community in a number of habitats.

Large populations of this species bloom at once in the Spring to produce the carpets of yellow on hillsides and in meadows – this phenomenon gives this plant its common name.

California Goldfield is usually just a few inches tall, with many short, slender, reddish-green stems bearing narrow leaves, mostly near the base.

With a flower no larger than a quarter, it attracts a variety of pollinators, including bees and butterflies.

California Goldfields are variable in appearance as they adapt to their environment. The plants grow taller with more rainfall, whereas the leaves grow smaller and tougher with less rainfall.

This tough species is known to tolerate soil better that is less than optimal for other plants.

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Lady’s Smock

Posted on August 16, 2024 by tspuckler

While hiking in Cuyahoga Valley National Park, I noticed this small wildflower. It is a perennial herb native throughout most of Europe and Western Asia. It is grown as an ornamental plant in gardens, and has become naturalized in North America as a result of cultivation.

Its other common name, “Cuckoo Flower,” derives from the formation of the plant’s flowers at around the same time as the arrival each Spring of the first Cuckoo Birds in the British Isles.

In the United States it tends to be found in man-made or disturbed habitats, river or stream floodplains, forests, fields, swamps and wetlands. I usually see it growing in partial shade at the edges of meadows.

In British folklore Lady’s Smock is said to be sacred to the fairies, and so it was considered unlucky if it was brought indoors. It was not included in May Day garlands for this reason.

This plant is also known as Meadow Bittercress, Mayflower and Milkmaids.

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Beach Morning Glory

Posted on June 28, 2024 by tspuckler

While walking along the California shoreline last month, it was hard not to notice this plant. This species of bindweed is a perennial vine which grows in beach habitats on the west coast and in selected areas on the east coast of North America, and across Europe into Asia.

The plant bears fleshy stems, kidney-shaped leaves, and attractive flowers with corollas that are delicate pink to vivid lavender. Its showy flowers are insect-pollinated and attract bees, butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, wasps and ants.

Beach Morning Glory is also called Railroad Vine due to its scrambling nature and ability to cover less-used tracks and roadsides. It is adapted to coastal areas where sand is plentiful and the soil is well-draining. Salt, heat, and wind don’t bother this plant and it is common to see it splayed across sand dunes.

Its leaves are succulent and rounded, with a notched tip resembling a cloven hoof, hence its species name, pes-caprae, which means “goat’s foot” in Latin. The roots of this plant often go for more than 3 feet into the sand.

Like other members of its family, its flowers are ephemeral; they bloom in the morning and begin to wilt and close up by afternoon, hence the common name “Morning Glory.” Beach Morning Glory typically blooms in Summer and Fall, but may bloom year-round.

Life is tough for a plant on the beach side of a sand dune. The wind is always blowing, battering stems and leaves with salt spray or burying them under layers of sand. There’s plenty of sun for photosynthesis, but no shade when rays get too intense. But Beach Morning Glory finds a way to thrive in this hostile environment.

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California Lilac

Posted on May 10, 2024 by tspuckler

While hiking in Marin County, California, I noticed these hard-to-miss plants. Not a true Lilac, but rather a member of the Buckthorn Family, it is one of the most fragrant and colorful native shrubs on the West Coast.

Native Americans have long used California Lilac blossoms for soap. When rubbed between your hands with water, the blossom lathers. And even more surprising, it has a nice wintergreen aroma.

California Lilac supports local wildlife by serving as an important food source for deer. Its seeds are food for quail. And its flowers are a source of nectar for birds, butterflies and bees. Wild Lilac is also a host plant for the California Tortoiseshell butterfly.

This plant can often be found growing in poor, rocky soil and flourishing in drought stricken areas. They are drought and cold tolerant, and prefer dry soil in full sun to achieve the best blooms. Their extensive root systems allow them to anchor in dry, rocky slopes.

Belonging to the genus Ceanothus, California Lilacs, have around 50 to 60 species. Their waxy, small leaves help them endure Northern California’s dry summers.

Another feature of California Lilac is its nitrogen-fixing ability. Most members of this genus have nitrogen-fixing bacteria in their roots that help to nitrify the soil, thereby reducing the need for fertilization but also enables them to survive wildfires. It is considered a pioneer plant because it’s among the first to grow back after a wildfire.

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Beavertail Cactus

Posted on March 22, 2024 by tspuckler

While hiking through the Arizona and Nevada desert, I often seen this classic arid-land plant. Found in the southwestern United States, it occurs mostly in the Mojave, Anza-Borrego, and Colorado Deserts, as well as in the Colorado Plateau and northwest Mexico.

Beavertail Cactus looks like the Prickly Pear Cactus, but does not have long spines. This is a medium-to-small species that grows to about a foot tall, with pink-to-rose colored flowers. This plant can be found in chaparral, desert and grassland. It grows in well drained soil composed of sand, gravel, cobble and even on boulders.

A single plant may consist of hundreds of fleshy, flattened pads. These gray-green, jointed stems are wide and flat resembling the tail of a Beaver. Although they lack spines, they have many small barbed bristles, called glochids, that easily penetrate the skin.

The Cahuilla Native Americans used this plant as a food staple. Its buds were cooked or steamed, and then were eaten or stored. Its large seeds were ground up to be eaten as mush. The Desert Tortoise enjoys eating the juicy pads and the magenta-colored flowers of this plant.

Beavertail is usually the first cactus in the Mojave Desert to bloom, flowering as early as February and through May.

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Indian Paintbrush

Posted on March 1, 2024 by tspuckler

While hiking on Mount Charleston in Nevada I came across a number of wildflowers; this one was particularly distinctive.

Indian Paintbrush is a hemiparasite, meaning that although it is green and can photosynthesize, it also has the ability to sequester nutrients from other organisms, in this case, perennial grasses.

Despite being parasites for part of their lives, these plants, like other flowering plants, rely on pollinators for reproduction. A variety of insects visit Indian Paintbrush flowers, especially bees. This is somewhat surprising since the color red is difficult for insects to see.

However, like most red flowers, it is especially adapted for pollination by hummingbirds. Hummingbirds have long bills that allow them to reach the nectar rewards at the end of long, tubular flowers.

Ironically, this plant was used by Native Americans as both a love charm in food and as a poison used to against their enemies, as this species is known to have toxic properties.

Indian Paintbrush generally prefers sunlight and moist, well drained soils. Their root systems connect with and grow into the root systems of other planets to harvest nutrients from their host plants. For this reason, they are not able to be transplanted easily.

That red color we so often admire is actually bracts, or specially modified leaves, as opposed to flowers. The plant’s true flowers are actually smaller, slender green growths hidden among the bracts.

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Leatherleaf

Posted on January 26, 2024 by tspuckler

While visiting a bog on Kent, Ohio, I came across this neat plant. It is a species characteristically found in sphagnum peat bogs. Leatherleaf provides cover for nesting mallards and some other ducks. It recovers quickly in peatlands that have been severely disturbed or mined for peat.

This plant has a distribution throughout the cool temperate and subarctic regions of the Northern Hemisphere from eastern North America to bogs in Finland and Japan.

Leatherleaf is often the first woody plant to encroach on the open water of a kettle hole lake. It is a small, dense, mound-shaped shrub, growing to 5 feet high, often spreading to form thickets.

As its common names implies, Leatherleaf has thick, leathery leaves to minimize water loss from transpiration. To conserve nutrients and maximize photosynthesis, its brownish evergreen leaves persist for nearly two seasons and are gradually shed as new leaves become established.

It’s urn-shaped white flowers appear in early Spring, often while ice is still present.

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Canadian Wild Ginger

Posted on January 5, 2024 by tspuckler

While hiking in Carmel, Indiana, I can across this bit of greenery on the forest floor. It is a herbaceous, perennial plant which forms dense colonies in the understory of deciduous forests throughout its native range in eastern North America.

Canadian Wild Ginger is unrelated to commercially available ginger; however, it is named “wild ginger” because of the similar taste and smell of the roots. Early European settlers used to dry the rootstalk, grind it to a powder and use it as a spice.

The plant’s two velvety, heart-shaped leaves barely reach 12 inches in height. Its flowers bloom from the base of the plant, often hidden by its wide leaves.

Many a hiker has walked past the large colonies of this early Spring wildflower not realizing that it has an interesting and peculiar flower hidden underneath its canopy of foliage.

Canadian Wild Ginger evolved to attract small pollinating flies that emerge from the ground early in the Spring, looking for a thawing carcass of an animal that did not survive the winter. By being so close to the forest flower, it is readily found by the emerging flies.

Not only is this plant cool to see in the wild, it is often grown in gardens as groundcover in shady situations.

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Seaside Bird’s-foot Trefoil

Posted on June 16, 2023 by tspuckler

While visiting Point Reyes National Seashore, I noticed this cool flower. It is found in moist open habitats, from the edges of forests out into open meadows and wetlands. It occurs from coastal mountains to the bluffs overlooking the sea.

Native to coastal California, this ground-hugging member of the pea family forms an inch-tall mat and carpets the ground with color. It is a member of coastal grassland and prairie ecosystems.

Seaside Bird’s-foot Trefoil’s flower clusters are made up of several tiny flowers each about half an inch long. The flowers have a bright yellow banner, or upper petal and bright pink or white lower petals.

This plant is perennial, but is Winter dormant, so the aboveground parts die off each winter. As temperatures warm, underground rhizomes re-sprout and new plants spring to the surface.

Seaside Bird’s-foot Trefoil is a nectar source for Painted Lady butterflies and a variety of native bees and other insects.

This plant is also known as Harlequin Lotus, Witch’s Teeth, Harlequin Deer-vetch and Coast Lotus.

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Western White Trillium

Posted on May 5, 2023 by tspuckler

While hiking in the Santa Cruz Mountains, I came across this unmistakable and endearing plant that softly lights up the vernal understory of moist coniferous and mixed forests in California and some of its surrounding states. This plant is also known as Pacific Trillium, Coast Trillium, and Pacific Wake-robin. The “wake-robin” name refers to the plants early spring blooming season.

This wildflower is easy to identify due to what looks like three showy white petals held just above three large triangular leaves. A perennial that grows from rhizomes, it technically produces no true leaves or stems above ground; the stems are considered an extension of the horizontal rhizome. The part of the plant that we notice most is an upright flowering stalk and the leaf-like structures are bracts, but most people call them leaves, because they photosynthesize.

This is one of many types of flowers that rely on ants for the distribution of their seeds. The ants collect trillium seeds and bring them back to their nests. Trillium have a calorie-laden appendage on each seed called a strophiole. Ants eat the strophioles and discard the seeds, thus dispersing them to different parts of the woods. Ants have been observed to carry trillium seeds as far as thirty feet from the plant where they collected it from.

Western White Trillium’s flowers bloom starting in late February in the southern part of its range and in March or April elsewhere. Citizen science observations of flowering plants of this species peak during the first week of April. Since White Trillium is Ohio’s State Wildflower, it was neat to see the West Coast species of this plant.

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Category Archives: Wildflowers – Spring

California Goldfield

Lady’s Smock

Beach Morning Glory

California Lilac

Beavertail Cactus

Indian Paintbrush

Leatherleaf

Canadian Wild Ginger

Seaside Bird’s-foot Trefoil

Western White Trillium