Spring Has Sprung

One of My Favorite Flowers

The calendar says that it is Spring. But, the weather says that it is "late Winter".  One of my favorite California native plants has been showing for a couple of weeks, as it can go either way.

As a naturalist, I like to have a theme in mind when I lead an interpretive walk. I see this as a means of engaging the audience’s interest, as opposed to just wandering around identifying plants until their eyes start to glaze over. One of the themes I use is “does the common name of this plant make sense”.  A favorite plant for this discussion is the Fairy Duster, Calliandra eriophylla. It takes little imagination to see that the fluffy pink blossoms do resemble feather dusters scaled down to fairy size, assuming we are thinking of Tinker Bell instead of Titania.

The flowers appear between late winter and late spring. They have dense clusters of pale to deep pink stamens and are about two inches wide. I think that they are quite attractive; and, in fact, Calliandra is derived from the Greek kallos, "beautiful," and andra, "stamen”. The leaves are also interesting being twice pinnately compound with each division bearing five to ten pairs of leaflets.

The plant, also known as False Mesquite, is a densely branched shrub, about two feet tall and twice as wide, native to western North America. A member of the Pea Family (Fabaceae), it belongs to a group of primarily tropical plants that include Acacias and Mimosas. However, Fairy Duster grows in sandy washes and on slopes in the arid desert and grasslands of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas; and Mexico.

But, to say it occurs in California is a bit misleading as it is found only in the Creosote Brush Scrub community and then seemingly limited to Imperial and San Diego Counties. Due to this geographic circumscription , it is included in the California Native Plant Society Inventory of Rare and Endangered Plants on list 2.3 (rare, threatened, or endangered in California; common elsewhere). In the interest of full disclosure, I would like to point out that one specimen was collected by Dr. Robert F. Thorne (of RSABG) on April 12, 1964, in Riverside County and that there is also a questionable 1881 accession from Kern County. I, myself, first encountered Fairy Duster while hiking in Riverside County. It was on land that was starting to be developed somewhere outside of Palm Springs, so it may not have been a natural occurrence.

Wherever we find it, I think it offers people an opportunity to ask people to look more carefully at nature and by observing this one flower they might go to focus on other aspects of nature rather than passively walk though it.

February 2018 Reading

The books that I finished reading in February 2018:

February 2018 Books: photo by Cliff Hutson

From Great to Poor

Head and shoulders above all the books I read this month is "A Different Drummer," by William Melvin Kelley. Indeed, it is one one of the best books that I have ever read. It is imaginative - starting with a mass exodus of all the black people in a Southern state - and well written. It contains, what for me is a fascinating perspective, a black man writing about what white people think about black people. I can not recommend it highly enough, especially for those of us who question what it means to be a black author.

"Wine. All the Time.: The Casual Guide to Confident Drinking" is a fun piece of fluff with some good pointers. It is aimed at a much younger demographic than the one this reader belongs to, but it did introduce me to the Kalimotxo. That is a good thing.

"Fire and Fury" has been all the rage lately, but I found it lacking. Much of what is covered I already knew from following "The Guardian".  A lot of the rest seems like just so much conjecture, signifying  nothing.

The Green Book

"The Green Book": photo by Cliff Hutson

The small, thin book in the photo, with no title on the spine, is a facsimile edition of the 1954 "The Negro Travelers' Green Book", usually referred as just "The Green Book". This book listed hotels, boarding houses, restaurants, beauty shops, barber shops and various other services would cater to black customers during the years that Jim Crow was rampant. It seems no surprise to me that interest in this publication is resurgent as divisions in America are being stoked by the subject of Michael Wolfe's book.

Off the Pace

I have completed eight books as of February. This means that I had better pick up the pace if I want to fulfill my self-imposed goal of sixty for the year.