Another New Season

Look what showed itself in the yard Monday: the first California poppy, Eschscholzia californica, of the year. Another new season has come to Greenvalley: wildflower season. It's one of my favorites.

The golden currant, Ribes aurem, was blooming all over Fryman Canyon. It surprised me that there are even a few ripe berries. They are edible, and according to references in the Greenvalley library, they were once gathered by our pioneer forebears for making preserves.

You can imagine how long it would take to pick a gallon for making jelly. And you know that the birds wouldn't help.

The genus Ceanothus is a large and generous family of shrubs. I think this one is C. cuneatus, and if I remember correctly, cuneatus refers to the bush's spines, which are indeed fierce. But if C. cuneatus doesn't like to be touched, it still wants to be admired. The honeyed smell of the blossoms, which literally perfume the air of the canyon, draws you cloeser. The common name of this temptress is Buckbrush.

Here is a menacing vegetable, Marah macrocarpus, that grows rampantly throughout the canyons. The sprouting vines rise from of the earth like a swarm of snakes and overtake everything. Two years back, when I was suffering a crazy spell, I could hardly stand to hike in Fryman Canon. Surrounded by M. macrocarpus, I felt lost in a plague of serpents. I wonder if other people suffer the same delusion: it's not usual to see where someone has ripped up the vines and crushed them underfoot. The horrible M. macrocarpus is actually nothing worse than a native gourd. It's common name, wild cucumber, would mislead one into thinking its fruit is edible. What is edible is the vine's starchy tuber, which can grow as large as one hundred pounds. The native Chumash indians called the species "man-root," and the scent of its flowers is even more alluring than that of blooming buckbrush.

I'm always happy to find this many-fingered compound leaf in the early spring. It is shared by all members of the Lupine family.

And Lupines are my absolute favorite. I try to grow them in the yard, but some pest always eats them.

This is miner's lettuce. It's edible, and every time I find a stand of it in a damp place, I stop and graze and reflect on the Forty-niners.

Most wildflowers prefer the sun, but this one lives in the land's creases: shady canyons and gullies and creekbeds. I won't tell you the common name, because it is lowly. The Latin name, Venegasia, is more fitting. Venegasia sounds to me like an Ovidean woodnymph or a notorious courtesan.