This time our class went to Mount Tamalpais! The Christmas season is one of my favorite times of the year! I love the cold, the gift-giving spirit, and the wonderful lights you can see at night. I figured since I never made a Christmas post, I can make one now and bring a little bit of the Christmas spirit to March. This location ended up being the perfect place for a Christmas post because the weather certainly matched Christmas in California. Unfortunately, we don’t get any snow down here, but we were still cold enough for it to still be considered winter. As a result of our cold weather, most of the plants we saw were either not flowering yet or adapted to the cold. In addition, we went to pretty far on top of Mt.Tamalpais. This means that we saw a slightly different habitat from a purely coastal one. We saw many more pines and other such trees in this area interspersed with more open fields of grasses and ferns. Altogether, the whole area looked extremely picturesque. Standing amongst the trees and grasses, you could see a huge swath of ocean and the city across the bay. In other words, if someone hasn’t made a movie in this area yet, they definitely should.
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The Perfect Christmas Tree
What better way to start off a short Christmas post that with a Christmas tree. The douglas fir is a famous species of an evergreen conifer tree that is widely sold as a Christmas tree across the country. My family particularly loves buying this tree during Christmas time because the oils inside of the pine needles have a very pleasant smell to them. I highly recommend buying this species of tree for your next Christmas celebration! They also have a nice pyramidal shape that is characteristic of all Christmas trees. However, unless you live on the west coast, you probably won’t be able to see as many of these beauties hanging around. These trees are primarily located in Oregon, Northern California and Washington. They also enjoy high elevations and areas with good drainage, otherwise, their roots have a tendency to rot. A fun fact about the douglas fir is that the wood is so strong that it was used in native Hawaiian war canoes even though there are no native species of douglas fir in Hawaii. All of the douglas fir wood used by native Hawaiians were logs that had drifted across the Pacific ocean. As a result, the douglas fir tree was actually a precious commodity for this culture.
Seed cone (top photo) Branches (Bottom Photo)
Description: The Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) is a tall pine tree that normally grows up to 67 meters tall. The trunks of the tree can be up to 4.4 meters wide. Their leaves are needles and 2 to 4 centimeters in length. Sometimes trees in this genus have leaves which present roughly 2 white lines on their abaxial side that give it a more Christmas tree look. The female cones of the tree are pendant and have bracts which are extremely well exerted. The cone is said to have “mousetails” hanging from them.
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The Naughty List
No Christmas is complete without pranking your brother by filling his stocking with coal, hotsauce and/or something else that is naughty. This next species of plant is a perfect stocking stuffer for those that have been naughty this year! Cirsium occidentale has a very prominent seed which is completely covered in prickly bracts. One fun fact about the thistle is that it is the national flower of Scotland. I think this flower is quite well suited to Scotland because its many mountains are just as prickly as the thistle itself. I’m glad to see that not all people view this type of flower as a weed! Go Scotland!
Description: Cirsium occidentale usually has a herbaceous habit and can stand up to 1.5 meters off the ground but is usually a bit shorter. The inflorescence of the flower is in a head arrangement. Like many members of Asteraceae, it possesses a very prominent involucre. Along with the phyllaries, this gives the plant its spiny appearance. The corolla is generally lavender in color.
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The Nice List
For the last species I will be posting about, I had to also have a good stocking stuffer to go in with the coal and hot sauce. My mom is a big fan of orchids (calypso bulbosa), so orchids are definitely a legitimate stocking stuffer. This particular particularly suits my mom because it is a bit of a loner orchid. My loves her family and friends but is also a natural introvert who reads a lot. The loner orchid has only one singular basal leaf and one singular flower which it depends upon. Ironically, the orchid we found at this location was probably the only orchid that was in bloom at the time.
Description: This plant can stand 7-18 centimeters tall and possesses rhizomes. The stem generally has a red color. The leaf shape is elliptical, petiol and basal. The flowers do not possess sepals. The corolla is pink with white and purple striations throughout. The lip is pendant and concave. The fruit the flower produces is erect.
