For our second field trip, we drove about an hour and a half north of San Francisco along Sir Francis Drake Blvd to Marin County. Our first stop was Drake’s Bay in Point Reyes, CA, followed by Leo T Cronin Fish Viewing Area in Lagunitas, CA. Like the previous field trip, we scavenged for leaflets from the lupine plant that produces purple flowers due to the presence of an allele that produces the colored pigment.
As mentioned above, we first arrived at Point Reyes, CA.
The first visit was successful, in that we were able to locate multiple lupine bushes just east of Drake’s Bay. However, very few bushes had visible flowers. Unlike the first field trip, the lupine bush plants were relatively distant from the ocean.
Like the lupine plant in Pescadero, the plant here exhibited a bright green pigment in the leaflets that made it easily identifiable among the other plants at the location.
After hiking to the beach, we drove to our next stop in Lagunitas, CA. We walked along the Lagunitas Creek, just outside the Samuel P. Taylor State Park, in search of the purple lupine plant, but were unsuccessful.
