common_nature | 2017 Flower Walk

At the risk of Spamming this group here are three posts that detail the Flower Walk we did this last Sat April 15th on my Ranch in Northern California.

We started up Red Barn Creek which was very full and a bit hard to cross. As usual the pace was extremely slow at first as everyone stopped and talked about every single new plant (it seemed!) Eventually we entered the big meadow across from Devil's Den. One of the members, using her field glasses spotted "a yellow flower" so we all trooped back across the stream and up into Devil's Den.

Devil's Den is an ever changing and eroding mass of highly Serpentine laced soil. Serpentine rock is part of the mantle rock, not the earth's crust. It forms in sea bottoms, fractures easily and is thrust up in our countryside as the continental plates collide. It is full of Magnesium and thus is very hard to grow anything in. Here the serpentine rock has mixed into this gravelly amalgam. It erodes really quickly and nothing grows on it.

Here are two pictures of our yellow Owls Clover all tangled up in purple vetch. They were way more brilliant yellow than either picture shows.

Chuck and Olly brought up the rear of the group as we climbed up and out of the top of Devil's Den. It looks so smooth and green but the cows make deep hoofprints into the soft grey clay making walking is really rather difficult.

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From:

marycatelli

Yeah, that's pretty barren rock.

shirebound

I would love to visit that area.

hazard

such incredible diversity and beauty as you jump state to state ... I've only ever driven through Cali sadly , there are SO MANY natural wonders to see there.

ranunculus

Our world, in general is amazing and beautiful. I'm just happy to share a little bit with my friends.

yourlibrarian

Looks like a great place for an outing, very scenic.

felis

What a fascinating look at the landscape, thank you! Do the meadows depend on cattle grazing/human activity?

The particular meadow that is shown, with all the white flowers, is really quite a boggy place in the winter. Being serpentine shrubs and trees don't grow well there, so it is totally natural - sort of.

It is really hard to answer your question. Our whole landscape has evolved as a fire ecology with natural fires burning the landscape every 6 to 15 years. The Native American population managed the landscape extensively using fire and pruning techniques for the last 10,000 years. Then white man came and destroyed that system. On our place they also cut down almost all the trees in the 1920s or 1930s. Then the State of California developed a "total fire suppression" policy, We have not had wild=land fire on our Ranch since the implementation of that policy in about 1961. Since So what IS natural? From the research that I'm aware of, our landscape should have a lot more open grassland than it has now, The trees should be larger and perhaps wider spaced. The brush, or chaparall plant community should have small plants widely placed with grass in between the plants, not the 15 foot tall inpenetratable mess, with little or no grass. Grass species should be dominated by deep rooted perennial grasses that can burn and rebound quickly.

Ah, interesting, thanks! (Also your comment below about the soil and geomorphology.) I'd momentarily forgotten about fire as a natural shaping factor; its complete suppression is a problem in many areas with mediterranean climate I think.

blessed_oak

What a fascinating photo series. I've never seen anything like that landscape before, with the Serpentine in it. I especially like the contrast of the Owl's clover and purple vetch in front of it.

So you have grey clay there...we have lots of orange-brown clay here in SW PA.

Our landscape is a jumble of ancient stream beds, lake beds and upthrust rocks. So we have the "blue Goo" clay, Hard yellow clay, sticky brownish clay and deep loamy red volcanic ash soils, sometimes within feet of each other. In fact this story is of a place where our hard yellow clay meets a blue goo spring area:
http://ranunculus.dreamwidth.org/437659.html#cutid1