Horses

[ranunculus]

Horses grazing in early January rain.  We have a lot more grass than normal for early January.

Comments

[chestnut_pod]

Gosh, this actually looks like some very familiar country, with those rolling hills and valley oaks -- and recent heavy rains!

ETA: or is it black oaks, actually?

Just another Norther California valley

[ranunculus]

They are, mostly, valley oaks in the creek bottom. A couple of black oaks on the right hand side and blue oaks going up the hill to the left. I've looked closely at a lot of leaves over the last three years. Got somewhat obsessed with tracing their outlines and drawing in the veins as I observed them. Folks who do genetics tell us that the oaks are quite promiscuous and there is a lot of cross pollenization. I believe it. One valley oak has a nice evenly lobed leaf that is a normal 3 inches long and 1 1/2 wide. The next tree has this 5 inch, long, narrow leaf with a pointed end and extra lobes. The tree after that is all tiny leaves, perfect valley oak pattern but only 1 3/4 inch long. Then the blue oaks and black oaks get involved, not to mention the live oaks! Makes me want to DNA test about 100 different trees to see what the real story is.