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left coast naturalist: Plant of the Month: Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides)

http://leftcoastnatty.blogspot.com/2010/01/dawn-redwood-metasequoia.html

Saturday, January 23. Plant of the Month: Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides). Is a time of change. Temperatures drop, daylight recedes, and the valleys begin to fill with moisture. Amphibians begin appearing from their summer sabbaticals, and our few deciduous trees add a splash of color to the usual sea of green. Bigleaf maple, boxelder, and buckeye slowly change, their leaves becoming a brilliant display of pigments before finally falling. After the discovery, the dawn redwood almost immediate...

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left coast naturalist: Fungus Among Us

http://leftcoastnatty.blogspot.com/2010/01/fungi-among-i-and-i.html

Saturday, January 23. In the winter; a person can hardly step without crushing one back into the soil. Technically speaking, mushrooms are the visible fruiting bodies of fungi; and as fungi, they are placed in their own kingdom. Prior to molecular analysis, all fungi were placed in the Plantae. Spores are sent flying through the air. If categorizing based on their ‘feeding’ habits, there are three major groups of mushrooms – saprotrophic. Obtaining nutrients from dead organic matter; parasitic. Most mush...

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left coast naturalist: Darlingtonia californica – the Cobra Lily (California pitcher plant)

http://leftcoastnatty.blogspot.com/2010/07/darlingtonia-californica-cobra-lily.html

Wednesday, July 21. Darlingtonia californica – the Cobra Lily (California pitcher plant). The cobra lily - aka California pitcher plant. Carnivorous plants have a notorious reputation, thanks in part to 'Audrey II' from the Broadway musical and subsequent cult film Little Shop of Horrors. Images come to mind of the monster crying out “Feed me, Seymour! Looking up into the trap - the last view many insects have of the outside world! Is the real thing. Digested prey inside leaf base. Because of its habitat...

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left coast naturalist: Plant of the Month: Western Wild Ginger (Asarum caudatum)

http://leftcoastnatty.blogspot.com/2010/04/plant-of-month-western-wild-ginger.html

Saturday, April 17. Plant of the Month: Western Wild Ginger (Asarum caudatum). In the plant community, sometimes small, nonchalant species can hold big surprises. Often an overlooked ground cover plant, western wild ginger is one such example. Lying low on the forest floor, it would be easy to walk past or even trample this unique plant. But a closer look will reveal a treasure worth discovering – wild ginger and its unusual, hidden flowers. Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom). While wandering through the...

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left coast naturalist: Have Wings, Will Wander - the Monarch Butterfly

http://leftcoastnatty.blogspot.com/2011/02/have-wings-will-wander-monarch.html

Wednesday, February 9. Have Wings, Will Wander - the Monarch Butterfly. Male monarch basking in Eucalyptus. Note the androconium - the black dots on the hindwing - these are the male's pheromone glands and the key feature to distinguish the sexes. The monarch butterfly ( Danaus plexxipus. It helps to know a little bit about the Monarch’s life cycle to answer that question. Monarch egg on Asclepias fruticosa. About the size of a pinhead. What about all those toxins? The toxins are retained through the chr...

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left coast naturalist: Plant of the Month: Fetid Adder’s Tongue (Scoliopus bigelovii)

http://leftcoastnatty.blogspot.com/2010/02/plant-of-month-fetid-adders-tongue.html

Sunday, February 7. Plant of the Month: Fetid Adder’s Tongue (Scoliopus bigelovii). As the haze of winter in the. Rolls on, one cannot help but look ahead to the sunny springtime. The fog lifts, the days become longer, and wildflowers begin to replace mushrooms as the main. In the forest, signifying brighter and warmer times. F it is wildflowers you are seeking, you don’t have to wait until the warmth of spring. Rearing out of the soggy soil. Is one of the first wildflowers of the y. A member of the Lil.

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left coast naturalist: Parasitic Plants, Part One: Little Foot and the Bearberry

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Monday, February 23. Parasitic Plants, Part One: Little Foot and the Bearberry. What if you could function without providing for yourself? What if, instead of going to work and toiling at your job to make ends meet, you simply took your necessary resources from someone else and were able to live a fulfilling and successful life, reproducing and passing on your genes to another generation? This life strategy, when adopted by. According to my dog-eared 1971 copy of Dictionary of Biology. Pallid manzanita w...

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left coast naturalist: Hide your kids, hide your wife, here come the pumas

http://leftcoastnatty.blogspot.com/2014/05/hide-your-kids-hide-your-wife-here-come.html

Monday, May 12. Hide your kids, hide your wife, here come the pumas. Do we need to vilify animals in order to explain natural predator-prey dynamics and dispersal behavior? From the tone of a recent snippet by SF Chronicle writer Tom Stienstra, it would seem so. His rather sensationalistic piece. Puma 46M under a car in a parking garage. From UCSC Puma Project. Unfortunately, natural systems don’t always agree with anthropocentric interests, such as managing prey species for hunting (black-tailed d...

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left coast naturalist: Oak Gall Wasps - the Cynipids

http://leftcoastnatty.blogspot.com/2010/09/oak-gall-wasps-cynipids.html

Thursday, September 9. Oak Gall Wasps - the Cynipids. If you’ve spent any amount of time admiring. 8217;s fine selection of oaks, you may have noticed strange growths on various parts of the trees. Bulbous tan lumps, tiny spiny projections, and bloated stems riddled with holes all embody galls. 8211; tumor-like growths induced by parasitic organisms wishing to make themselves a home. While many different plants are hosts to galls,. Stands wings and thorax above the rest – the gall wasps. While developing...

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left coast naturalist: Plant of the Month: Leopard Lily (Lilium pardalinum)

http://leftcoastnatty.blogspot.com/2010/01/leopard-lilies.html

Saturday, January 23. Plant of the Month: Leopard Lily (Lilium pardalinum). Along the rivers and streams of the. Something special is happening. In moist areas sheltered from the blazing summer sun, a familiar face is making its annual appearance. Lilium pardalinum. The leopard lily, is blooming. Specifying the “Leopard Lily” as L. pardalinum. Within the species itself occur five recognized subspecies, all morphologically similar but varying in their range and floral details. The leopard, Volmer&#821...