Cassandra Odulio

• Date: February 21, 2019
• Location: San Pedro Valley, 37°34’15.59″N -122°28’8.39″W
• Habitats seen: tall forests, dirt paths/cliffs
• Weather: sunny, breezy

I especially liked this trip to the San Pedro Valley, because the location is close to my house (please do not try to find me) and I didn’t know it even existed! I’d like to take my family on hikes there in the future. It was beautiful and it seemed like a hidden spot of untouched nature, tucked away in a corner of my suburban hometown. We saw a lot of new plants and some plants we had seen before. Incredibly, I managed to lose all the photos I took from this trip, so Matthew kindly sent me some of his (thanks Matt)! Also I took some from the internet.

Eriodictyon californicum – Yerba Santa

This plant is a shrub that is native to California. It is in the family Boraginaceae. The name Yerba Santa is Spanish for “holy herb,” named so because of its many medicinal purposes. It is most easily identifiable by the coloring of its leaves, which are dark green-black, giving it a muddy and dirty appearance. The leaves are long and narrow, venation is pinnate, and the margins are shallowly dentate and rolled underneath the leaf. It hadn’t flowered yet, but the flowers on this plant during springtime would be small and funnel-shaped.

Cortaderia jubata – Pampas grass

I have seen these plants often growing up, and because of their size, I had never thought of them as grasses. But that’s what they are! Andean pampas grass is a non-native introduced plant from the family Poaceae. They have thin green blades as leaves, and they are recognizable because of their huge poofy feather-like spikelet inflorescences. Interestingly, all of these plants are pistillate, so there are only female plants! They reproduce asexually, developing embryos without fertilization.

Arbutus menziesii – Madrone

The madrone tree is native to California, with a brightly colored red-orange peeling bark. This one was so intensely orange, some of us exclaimed out loud when we first saw it. (Its true color is not fully perceived by this picture.) It is in the family Ericaceae. Its leaves are bright green and glabrous with pinnate venation. We didn’t see any flowers, but they have white, bell-shaped perfect flowers. The fruit are tiny orange spheres, and apparently Native Americans used to dry them out and make necklaces out of them.