28. California's Ephemeral Spring
We are in the midst of Spring here in the San Francisco Bay Area, the lovely neon green hills time! Life gets busy with all kinds of work and fun, but I always make sure to get out and hike while things are flowering and putting on fresh new growth. It never ceases to amaze me how much green sprouts from the brown of the earth this time of year in our California native landscapes, and always makes me think of the distinct seasonality of our local plant life, and how quickly it fades to the golden brown of our summer and fall.
On a hike through Tilden Park last weekend I saw all kinds of great native plants coming up through the moist forest floor, growing quickly as the temperatures get warmer. Interestingly, many of the plants of the Oak Woodland understory never make it into most nurseries or designed landscapes. There are various reasons, but what strikes me is the ephemeral nature of so many of these plants - they have a limited amount of the year that they are actually green and thriving plants.
Take for example the Cow Parsnip (Botanical name: Heracleum lanatum). This is no small plant, growing to 4 feet tall or more, with big lush leaves and white flower clusters, quite evident on the trails in the East Bay hills right now. It adds a nice layer of green to the woodland, has great habitat value and was well used by the local Native Americans. However, as things dry out in the mid-summer or late fall, it dies back significantly. Another example is the Soap Plant (Botanic name: Chlorogalum pomeridianum) that grows from a bulb with strap-like leaves that have wavy edges, and produces a big flower stalk with white flowers. You also see this one coming up everywhere right now, and it gets its name from the use of its bulb and roots as a soap by Native Americans. But like most bulbs, the Soap Plant dies back later in the year. And of course, there are a whole host of beautiful native wildflowers that quickly sprout, flower, and produce seed as they die back to wait until next year’s rains.
For those of us transplanted from other parts of the country, the seasons of the Bay Area take some getting used to. Since the native plants follow those seasons, their growth habits can seem just as strange. In a lot of ways, the late summer and fall here are really like winter in other places: many native plants to go dormant because of the lack of moisture and hot temperatures. If one was to have a literal native plant garden, you would have to adapt your own idea of what a garden should look like to meet this seasonality with its sparse green growth and few flowers. Most of the time, people turn to non-native plants and supplemental watering to keep things green and flowering year-round. It is of course a great aspect of California’s weather that their are a huge number of plants from all over the world that can do well here.
I’m not trying to advocate a particular approach here, just observing that there is a great diversity of native plants out in the wild that only last a short time and are difficult to integrate into home gardens. Their ephemeral nature is something I will keep learning from, looking for ways to bring some of these plants into my garden designs.
Right now I’m just encouraging you to get out in the hills and enjoy it while it lasts! We’re getting another good dose of rain this week, so the flowers and green grasses should persist for a little while longer– just watch out for the Poison Oak!