San Diego native plants
This watercolor painting is an homage to one of my favorite locally native species I visit on a regular basis. The starry blossoms that appear on these miniscule plants in late spring are roughly the size of my pinky fingertips.
Robin Street-Morris. Short-lived Dudleya (Dudleya brevifolia). Transparent watercolor on 300lb cold press paper. 5.5” x 8.5” (14 x 22cm).
I wonder how many people have passed this live oak in Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve over the years without pulling knives on it and inviting pathogens for a picnic? Weak appeals to tradition could be made to justify new arborglyphs, none of which hold much water when we’re talking about trees in nature preserves; what these clowns did is no Chumash “scorpion tree.”
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There’re still flowers to see in San Diego other than invasive mustard and ice plants despite our minimal rainfall over the winter. I enjoy the hunt.
brownspined pricklypear (Cylindropuntia californica var. parkeri), Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve
red-shouldered hawk (Buteo lineatus), Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve
lanceleaf liveforever (Dudleya lanceolata), Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve
coyote (Canis latrans), Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve
climbing milkweed (Funastrum cynanchoides var. hartwegii), Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve
San Diego barrel cactus (Ferocactus viridescens var. viridescens) with pink sand verbena (Abronia umbellata), Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve
sacred datura (Datura wrightii), Torrey Pines State Beach
San Diego goldenstar (Bloomeria clevelandii), Louis Stelzer County Park
delicate clarkia (Clarkia delicata), Louis Stelzer County Park
San Bernardino larkspur (Delphinium parryi), Louis Stelzer County Park
A cherrypicked view from Kumeyaay Promontory at Louis Stelzer County Park sans enormous powerlines.
This is on the way to our trash and recycling bins. I suppose it's my version of a container garden. It started a couple of years ago with some Calorchortus weedii var. intermedius bulbs from Telos Rare Bulbs. Wildlife kept eating the emerging leaves, so I chucked in some Opuntia prolifera cladodes that had fallen from the one I planted at the end of the driveway. The Eschscholzia californica is a volunteer from elsewhere in the yard. Maybe next spring will finally be the year for that C. weedii.
