Edgewood Park & Natural Preserve

Date: April 4th , 2019
Location: Engelwood Park & Natural Preserve
132° SE 37 °28’26 N 122 °16’44″W
Redwood City, CA 220 ft Elevation.

Site description: Our trip was to Engelwood Park and Natural Preserve in Redwood City, CA. Vegetation was diverse from shrub-like or shorter weedy species to leather oak trees, madrones, ferns and a LOT of poison oak along the trail. Some of the areas specially the first part of the trail had a moist environment with lots of shade and the last portion of our hike had mostly open spaces with apparently less water but plenty of sunlight access and with abundan grasses instead of ferns.

– Identified species –

Canyon nemophila (Nemophila heterophylla) from Boraginaceae family. Annual plant. They’re very delicate plants with opposite nodes. Highly dissected and deeply lobed leaves. Tends to grow in shady wet areas. It has VERY small and radially symmetric white flowers.The calyx lobes have a size of 2-4 mm, the corolla is 3-10 mm and 4-12 mm wide. Anthers have a blackish color. Flowering time is from February through June.

Canyon nemophila

Striped coralroot (Corallorhiza striata) from Orchidaceae family. The plant can be 15-50cm tall. The stem is generally brown +/- purple. It doesn’t appear to have green parts. No apparent leaf tissue. The flowers are bilaterally symmetrical and pretty unique. The sepals are light pink or pale brown and they’re curved forward. The petals have 3-5 longitudinal stripes than can go from red to purple color Flowers have the classic structure of an orchid with a lip forming a landing structure for bees. They grow in open to shaded mixed-evergreen or conifer forest and/or in decomposing leaf litter. In this trip we found this orchid very close to the trail in a wet and somewhat shaded area.

Striped coralroot

Royal larkspur (Delphinium variegatum) from Ranunculaceae family. The stem is usually less than 50 cm. The base of the plant is hairy. The leafs are lobed and grow proximally on the first third of the stem. The name refers to the nectar spur that sticks out of the flower, this is the place where insects reach out to get the nectar and this is important because only some insects can reach it – specific pollinators. Raceme inflorescence and pubescent. Petals are more inconspicuous and hairy. Sepals are more showy.

Royal Larkspur

Summary: We left USF around 1 PM and we arrived around approx. 32 minutes later although the map from USF to the park has an estimated time of 42 minutes. We didn’t find traffic at all on our way. The weather was warmer than in our previous field trips and we could see flowers although most of them were very (VERY) small. It was nice to see a different family of flowers (Orobanchaceae). We saw a very different orchid which was pretty cool and the paintbrushes are beautiful. Another interesting thing is that we were able to contrast some species from the Ranunculaceae family that have very different morphological features even though they belong to the same family.

– Additional species –

Rusty popcorn flower – Plagiobothrys nothofulvus
Family : Boraginaceae
Native plant

Rusty popcorn

2. Blue dicks – Dichelostemma capitatum
Family : Themidaceae
Native plant

blue dicks with a spider!

3. Wood fern – Dryopteris arguta
Family : Dryopteridaceae
Native plant

Wood fern

4. Snowberry – Symphoricarpos albus
Family : Caryophyllaceae
Native plant

Young Snowberry

5. Pineapple weed – Matricaria discoidea
Family : Asteraceae
Native plant

Pineapple weed

6. California goldfields – Lasthenia californica
Family : Asteraceae
Native plant