look at the colors, man

[calimac]

As our greatest native author, Ursula Le Guin, has noted, California is an austere place. The hills of the central part of the state are dry brown grass, spotted with occasional oak trees. Visitors and newcomers find it bleak and uninviting. People who live here like it: you have to, or you couldn't stand to stay.

All this is true except for a couple months in the late winter and spring, particularly after years with heavy late rainfall, like this one. Suddenly all the hills are green: normal in some places, but a stunning transformation here. And the wildflowers come out for a brief visit.

Then's the time to head out to the hills and admire the scenery. So that's what I did yesterday. Don't ask me the names of these plants, except for the orange California poppies. (Be thankful I was alone: I have the irritating habit of cackling "Poppies!" every time I see some.) There were stalk-like purple flowers. There were tiny little white flowers, and equally tiny little yellow flowers. On the low foothills and in remote valleys, the yellow flowers covered the fields in profusion, looking from a distance as if a swarm of giant bees had unloaded their pollen on the landscape. Normally dry creeks were flourishing; just above one verdant rushes-choked pool, I dipped my eyeglasses to clean off the bbq sauce that had overenthused itself at lunch.

We have a lot of very remote back country above San Jose, and it's good to get out in it once in a while. The rare outburst of vegetation was a worthy excuse.

Comments

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

The yellow flowers are usually mustard, aka oxalis. That's why they have Mustard Festivals at this time of year. And yes, a carpet of them is gorgeous. Unless you planted a field of some other type of weed for your grass.
Our Side Yard is looking beautiful. Big Harold has not been in the mood to mow the stuff to make it look like grass yet.

[k6rfm.livejournal.com]

The purple stalks were probably lupines. Tiny white and yellows, who knows, but the yellow certainly might have been mustard.

Mustard is not Oxalis, though both have yellow flowers. Mustard is a Brassica sp, like cabbages, turnips, and rapeseed (source of canola oil), all of which have flowers that look like mustard. (Yes, it's the same plant that gives mustard seed which is ground up to make the condiment.) Oxalis are "sorrels", and besides their yellow flower the trefoil leaves (like a shamrock or the club card suid) are very distinctive.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Well, it looked more like a shamrock than a cabbage, that was my first thought. And it looked more like the photos of sorrels than of mustard plants that I found on wikipedia.

Lupins? All I know of those is what I learned from Monty Python's Dennis Moore sketch. I'd never heard of them before I first saw that, so the association is now indelible with me.