Why Do We Need It?

by Andrea Williams

This post is the third in a year-long series celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act. Read last month’s post here.

In talking about saving rare things, the question of “What good is it?” is often raised. After I set aside my unvoiced, impertinent rejoinder of “What good are you?” I still find the question of a species needing to have use a rather odd one, along the lines of “What good is beauty?” or “Why keep all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle?” And I could talk about intrinsic value, or about potential undiscovered uses, or about the morality of stewardship over destruction, but I won’t.

I want you to think of a place. A wild place that you love, and what makes it different from any other place for you.

Unlike Mt. Tamalpais, which has thousands of acres of serpentine soils that provide homes for plants found nowhere else on earth, San Francisco only has a few patches. In the early 1900s Alice Eastwood named a new kind of manzanita the Franciscan manzanita (Arctostaphylos franciscana), as it grew on three of the rare patches of thin soil in the City and nowhere else. But San Francisco was a growing metropolis and the first site was lost to a subdivision; two others remained in cemeteries. But when San Francisco’s land became so valuable the buried dead were shipped to Colma, the last populations of Franciscan manzanita were also dug up. Alice Eastwood bemoaned the loss of the wild plant she loved as Laurel Hill Cemetery fell to the blade, even though her colleague took cuttings to grow in a garden; would we celebrate the last wild tigers living in zoos? She grieved the loss of a plant that made “her” place what it was, a place like no other on earth.

In a new chapter for the Franciscan manzanita, ecologist Dan Gluesenkamp doing what many of us do—scanning roadsides for weeds—saw a mound of manzanita growing next to an off-ramp. The area had been cleared of taller vegetation in preparation for the Doyle Drive work near the Golden Gate Bridge. He thought perhaps it was the endangered Raven’s manzanita (Arctostaphylos montana ssp. ravenii), another plant that once grew with the Franciscan manzanita but still exists in a single genetic individual growing as clones around the Presidio. The shrub turned out to be the Franciscan manzanita, now a listed endangered species that has been moved to a different spot on the Presidio.

Mt. Tamalpais manzanita (Arctostaphylos montana ssp. montana)

So how does this tie to Tam? We have our own “rare” serpentine-loving manzanita, the Mt. Tamalpais manzanita (Arctostaphylos montana ssp. montana), but instead of a few individuals we have several thousand. It’s one of the dominant plants in our serpentine chaparral, one of the plants that make Tam different from any other place. And as the closest living relative to the endangered manzanitas of San Francisco, plant experts turned to our populations to test germination methods for any seeds of the Franciscan manzanita in the soil salvaged along with the plant. Our wealth of serpentine and foresight in setting land aside a century ago may help contribute to the saving of a species, returning a piece of uniqueness back to the world.

http://www.nps.gov/goga/naturescience/endangered-scrubland-plants.htm
http://baynature.org/articles/the-presidios-miracle-manzanita/

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Wish You Were Here

by Andrea Williams

Leopard lilies on the Mt. Tamalpais Watershed

The Marin Municipal Water District and the California Academy of Sciences held a bioblitz a few weeks ago. I haven’t written about it yet, because all I can give you are numbers and words. I can’t make you present in the Throckmorton Fire Station engine bay in the morning, the air electric with anticipation for the day’s sites, where people would be going, and the things they might see. I can’t take you to a spot lush with green grasses and sedges, show you the impossibly vibrant colors of a leopard lily while you’re immersed in the rank odor of hedge nettle. You won’t be there, part of a focused team, each with a task essential to documenting the plant life at that spot, at that instant of time, blending centuries-old herbarium specimen collection methods with present-day GPS camera technology. You aren’t back at the fire station in the afternoon, surrounded by waves of laughter and chatter as people share details of the day’s experience, pool their data, ask questions about their plant specimens. And I couldn’t save you a piece of MMWD’s birthday cake. But you can share in a solitary facsimile of the process, by taking photographs and locations of plants you see and uploading them to iNaturalist or Calflora, or using one of their smartphone apps, to contribute to the body of knowledge about the mountain.

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Camping on the Watershed?!

by Andrea Williams

This time of year, there’s a lot of perfectly legal tent camping going on around Mt. Tam. Our native tent caterpillars are recreating in the oaks, and it’s fun to see!

Western tent caterpillar (Malacosoma californicum). Courtesy of Shirley Freitas.

We have three tent caterpillar species in California, probably all of which can be found on the watershed (I just haven’t seen the forest tent caterpillar yet). The most obvious is the western tent caterpillar (Malacosoma californicum), which spins the most complete tents, where the caterpillars hang out, eat, and molt. Their covering of fine orange bristles over a black base gives them a cinnamon hue, but like the other two species they do have some blue and white speckling as well.

While western tent caterpillars are attractive, I must confess to finding the Pacific tent caterpillars (Malacosoma constictum) much cooler—maybe it’s the blue racing stripes down the sides, offset with white tufts, and just a hint of orange in the central black stripe. These caterpillars spin a more rudimentary tent which they just use to change (molt their skin, that is); they feed in communal masses outside the tents.

Forest tent caterpillar (Malacosoma disstria Hubner). Courtesy of Thérèse Arcand, Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service.

The forest tent caterpillar (Malacosoma disstria) doesn’t even make a tent, but spins silken mats on branches or trunks where a bunch of them will group together to rest or molt—the equivalent of just tossing a tarp on the ground to sleep. These dark blue caterpillars have a striking white keyhole pattern down their backs flanked by wavy red-brown lines.

Another noticeable caterpillar on our oaks is the California oakworm, which later in life becomes the California oakmoth (Phrygandia californica). These caterpillars are also mostly black, with creamy stripes and some blue-green and reddish mottling; but unlike the tent caterpillars, the oakworms are hairless with a large, round, orange-brown head. In a good year for them, they can completely defoliate a coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia).

Like most moths, the caterpillars are much showier than the adults. Both young and adults are a couple of inches long, but where the larvae are all blacks, blues, rust and white with patterns and bristles, the adult color ranges from cream to buff to cinnamon-sugar with a couple of paler or darker diagonal lines on the wings. The moths are a nutritious treat for insect-eating birds such as black phoebes (Sayomis nigricans). While the damage from these native caterpillars certainly looks bad, the oaks can easily shake it off and hungry caterpillars have never been known to kill a tree. They just camp out for a few weeks in the spring!

Much of this information is distilled from a fabulous and useful publication from the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Research Station, “A Field Guide to Insects and Diseases of California Oaks” (General Technical Report PSW-GTR-197 July 2006). It is available for free online, although if you can find a printed copy it’s much nicer!

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Broom Is Broom, Right?

by Andrea Williams

I’ll have to work on the song lyrics—
      Oh, it grows like a weed
      With its pods full of seeds
      That’s a broom plant!
—but “broom” is a non-specific term for any number of leguminous (in the pea family) shrubs with a very upright and twiggy habit. Supposedly they look like upside-down brooms, and an uprooted shrub could be used as a sweeping implement. Up here on the Mt. Tamalpais Watershed, of course, we’re more interested in sweeping broom off our lands.

French broom (Genista monspessulana). Photo courtesy of Carina (northbaywanderer).

We have three non-native brooms on the watershed that infest about five percent of our lands, but the three species are actually quite different in some ways. Our major weedy broom is French broom (Genista monspessulana), which keeps its three-parted leaves year-round. It does much better in the shade and has a harder time establishing in grasslands than the other two, probably for that very reason: The leaves can “catch” more sunlight but they will also lose water (and be in danger of dehydrating) from that larger surface area. French broom is closely related to sweet broom (Genista canariensis), which is still occasionally sold in nurseries even though it has been shown to hybridize with French broom—its genes were found in broom on Mt. Tam! Studies are still ongoing to see if this contributes to “hybrid vigor” and makes our broom more invasive than most.

Scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius). Photo courtesy of MPF.

Our second species is Scotch broom (or, as one of my college professors used to correct, Scot’s broom), Cytisus scoparius. Scotch broom begins the year with leaflets as well, but soon loses them. Its deep green, ridged stems do the photosynthesizing for the plant. The flowers of Scotch broom are larger and deeper yellow than French, and ornamental varieties (prohibited but still seen in the wild as “sports”) can be white, pale yellow, or pink and red. To me, it’s the broomiest of brooms, and I can imagine using it to sweep a dusty stoop on a late afternoon—maybe after a day of pulling it from the grasslands it tends to invade here.

Spanish broom (Spartium junceum). Photo courtesy of John M. Randall, The Nature Conservancy.

Our third species is Spanish broom (Spartium junceum), which for a very brief period has tiny leaves, but soon loses them. Like Scotch broom, its stems do the photosynthesizing for the plant. The fat, blue-green stems of Spanish broom are tipped by large, deep yellow flowers in June and July which make it easy to spot in the dense patches it tends to form. It grows well in even the harshest spots and is harder to pull than the others because the stems tend to break off, leaving the root in the ground to sprout anew. Spanish broom has a rounded shape that reminds me of green coral for some reason.

Chaparral pea (Pickeringia montana)

But we have native “broom” plants too. Coyote brush (Baccharis pilularis) is sometimes called chaparral broom, although I think that name is better applied to what is commonly called chaparral pea, Pickeringia montana.

Our broomiest native, at least as far as looks, is deerweed or California broom (Lotus scoparius). Since it has deep green stems, tiny sparse leaflets and yellow pea flowers, it can be hard to tell apart from non-native brooms; but it’s smaller (one to two feet tall), and the fruits curl into pointy-toed elfin shoes, much different from the flat pods of non-native brooms.

California broom (Lotus scoparius). Photo courtesy of Zoya Akulova-Barlow.

We know non-native brooms have a lot of detrimental effects on our lands, from changing the soil chemistry and habitat structure to blocking animal (including human) passage and increasing maintenance needs to keep roads, trails and fuelbreaks open. We also know the seeds in the soil may outlive us, and broom removal is a long slog. The best thing to do is keep it out of areas it’s not in yet, and pull it quickly before it reproduces. That’s where you can help: Many of our regular habitat restoration events involve pulling broom, and brooms are three of our target plants for our hike-and-map squad of weed watchers.

Weed Watchers is a program to look for the worst plants in the best places. We know where the big patches of broom are already, but finding new sites while they are still small saves time, money, and prevents the damage these plants can do; and knowing where weeds aren’t is important in setting priorities. By signing up to be a weed watcher, you get training on the plants we’re most concerned about and how to map them (on paper maps or with a GPS). Then, you go out and hike! You can go with another weed watcher, by yourself, or with staff on a monthly guided saunter. You should have some knowledge of plants, be willing to collect data, and deal with the paradox that a successful day means not finding anything! Weed watching is seasonal, and trainings are happening on the 15th and 26th of this month. Click here for more on the program.

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If There Are Robins, It Must Be January

by Andrea Williams

I entered the year in a fog of illness, and returned to work and full awareness with sunshine and relatively fine weather. It took a flock of American robins to make me realize that yes, it is actually January.

Milkmaids (Cardamine californica)

We all have our ways of telling time, both day to day and monthly or seasonally. Some people notice lengthening days—it’s not dark when I leave for work—or have school calendars or technology to keep them grounded in an annual rhythm. I tend to notice birds and plants; a lot of people do, more so on the East Coast where seasons are more distinct. But the reminders are always there: both Orion at night and golden-crowned sparrows during the day tell me it’s winter; robins tell me it’s January; and the bold leaves of the first wildflowers tell me it’s late January. No snowdrops and crocuses here, just clear white of milkmaid flowers (Cardamine californica ) and the grassy spears of ground iris (Iris macrosiphon) and chow-chow purple first leaves of houndstongue (Cynoglossum grande).

Houndstongue (Cynoglossum grande)

In March there will be trilliums (mostly Trillium ovatum), which it seems silly to call wake-robins out west where the robins are not the harbingers of spring they are elsewhere. But come June I’ll know it’s summer when the farewell-to-spring (Clarkia amoena) bloom!

The study of the timing of life is called phenology. It tracks all sorts of things, like the leafing out of deciduous plants, flowering and fruiting, bird migration, insect emergence, and dozens of other life cycle stages for a myriad of organisms. People have followed phenology for ages to know when to plant, or hunt, or head to their favorite wildflower spot. There’s been a renewed interest in phenology recently as an indicator of climate change, to see if things are happening sooner than they used to. Endeavors such as the National Phenology Network and Project Budburst have begun to centralize individual efforts and provide methods and a storehouse for data. In Europe, they have a longer and more detailed record, and have been able to produce summaries such as “250 years of spring” (actual report here) using nearly 400,000 observations of first flowering stretching back to 1753! You can explore these efforts online and join to submit your observations as well, or keep a natural calendar of your own.

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Off on Your Own

by Andrea Williams

This time of year, I’m noticing more and more offspring off on their own. From a young bobcat making its way past my office last month, to the fall harvest, the young are making their own way in the world. 

I find the different life strategies fascinating—thousands of thistle seeds float by from an annual plant; a pair of young sister does bound across the road; a juvenile raccoon pops up from a culvert to check his surroundings; a coworker sends his daughter off to college; redwood shoots sprout from the base of a parent tree. Some species invest their reproductive energy in making many offspring; others invest a great deal of energy in just a few offspring. Some plants can do both, like the redwood: A single giant produces hundreds of thousands of tiny seeds from diminutive cones throughout its life, but generally the successful trees are daughter clones that sprout from the roots of a parent tree, taking nourishment through the difficult juvenile time of establishment.

Being a species that invests a great deal in its offspring, we tend to value that strategy more, thinking it superior at least morally. What kind of parent would toss thousands of copies of itself into the harsh world with no guidance or care? But then, look at how many thistles there are! And how many goldfinches eating those seeds—fewer finches than thistles, but still more finches than hawks that feed on the finches and other small birds. But those seeds, those young finches and hawks have sprung off (mostly) on their own now to succeed or fail; and by their success or failure feed others making their own way in the world.

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Changing Your Mind

by Andrea Williams

Very often when I talk to people about invasive plants, I hear, “It’s all green, isn’t it?” Yes, almost all plants are green—and all vertebrates exhale CO2. There is an even greater diversity of life within the plant kingdom than the animal, but we seem to appreciate it less (although even I will admit to being more excited seeing a mountain lion than a California nutmeg). Would we accept a world in which roof rats, wild pigs, and pigeons were the only wildlife we saw? But very often we shrug when faced with a solid stand of invasive non-native plants, which have little to no value as habitat or food, and not much in the way of landscape interest.

Gardeners and landscapers create interest by using plants that vary in structure and color. They also look for plants that are hardy with few pests and diseases, grow quickly, and have a profusion of attractive flowers or fruits. Unfortunately, these are also characteristics of an ideal weed, and several of the invasive plants we are troubled with today originated in horticulture. I tend to think of garden plants in terms of a “change your mind” factor: if I planted this now, and then changed my mind about it, how hard would it be to remove? If the answer is anything other than “not hard”—if it spreads by roots or stems that are difficult to pull, if it seeds aggressively, if it won’t stay where I planted it—I prefer to avoid it, as I know these plants are weeds. If they’re not weeds in my yard, they’re weeds to someone nearby, and just like I don’t want dogs squatting in my yard, I don’t want cotoneaster popping up either.

When gardens scale up into landscapes, it makes me think of kitchens. Landscapes tend to follow similar design fads, with plants coming in and going out of vogue as people change their minds about what looks good. When I see sweet alyssum I think avocado and gold appliances; when I see Mexican daisy I think granite countertops and maple cabinets. And I, for one, can’t wait for the daisy fad to pass, since it’s spreading onto MMWD lands and beginning to displace native species.

In the interest of protecting our limited water supply and ensuring the efficient delivery of landscape water, MMWD developed and adopted Water Conservation Ordinance 414, which requires certain things to be considered when designing and installing landscaping. One of these requirements is not planting species known to be weeds. To that end, MMWD has put together a handy list of plants not to plant, with alternatives for species still in use despite a high degree of difficulty in the “change your mind” department. Some species are still allowed, even though we know their weedy ways—there isn’t a turf grass out there that isn’t invasive—but by doing a few simple things you can reduce the risk to wild areas. Aside from “spaying and neutering” your plants by removing fruits of wind- or bird-dispersed plants like English ivy and cotoneaster, you can dump your yard waste in your own compost pile or green bin, and NEVER off the side of the road! People who would never dump an old avocado green refrigerator in wild lands might think nothing of tossing green waste over the side, because “It’s all green, isn’t it?” But unlike the fridge, that green can spread, as it has off the side of Bolinas-Fairfax Road where someone dumped cape ivy and periwinkle. And that’s trash that multiplies on its own!

By changing our minds a little—valuing native plant diversity, planting species with an eye to potential problem plants, and disposing of green waste responsibly—we can have (or prevent) a huge impact on the places we love.

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Soulajule Jewel

by Andrea Williams

Flowering Baker's larkspur (Photo courtesy of Holly Forbes, University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley)

Some of you may remember the gripping saga of the endangered Baker’s larkspur (Delphinium bakeri): Seeds from the last remaining wild population were grown by the University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley and reintroduced into the wild in January at MMWD’s Soulajule Reservoir. The plants there have blossomed, and the project has been fruitful, in both literal and figurative senses of both phrases. At the time of my visit in late April, every one of the tiny sprouts had grown into a robust, flowering adult, and many had begun to produce the fat green crowns characteristic of larkspur fruits. Soon they will die back to their roots and wait out the heat of summer and fall, until the cold damp of winter wakes them next year, hopefully joined by the offspring of this year.

Soulajule itself is a bit of a gem, a surprisingly sizeable lake tucked away in the wooded hills of West Marin, offering quiet delight to those who visit and a new chance at survival to an endangered larkspur hidden away, an indigo jewel in a verdant crown.

Visiting Soulajule: The entrance to the reservoir is three miles west along Marshall-Petaluma Road. An unmarked gate (latched but unlocked) will be on your left. For your first visit, it might be easiest to find this hidden treasure if you go with someone who has been there before or join an organized hike. Marin County Open Space District and California Native Plant Society (Milo Baker and Marin chapters) sometimes lead outings.

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What’s Up?

by Andrea Williams

Red larkspur (Delphinium nudicaule) and shooting-stars (Dodecatheon hendersonii)

Some invisible threshold has been passed, and Mt. Tam is a riot of color. Last month, seems only the blues of houndstongue (Cynoglossum grande) and ground iris (Iris macrosiphon) and the white of milkmaids (Cardamine californica) relieved the verdant carpet. Now, flowers of every hue greet me at every turn. The black oak’s (Quercus kellogii) young red leaves grow chartreuse and shiny above golden catkins; the evergreen madrones (Arbutus menziesii) are awash in creamy blossoms humming with bees. Flat footsteps-of-spring (Sanicula arctopoides) fade, while its sister-species coastal blacksnakeroot (S. laciniata) and Pacific blacksnakeroot (S. crassicaulis) shoot yellow flowers skyward, only to be outdone by purple shoe buttons (S. bipinnatifida). Bright California poppies (Eschscholzia californica) clamor from the hillsides, while red larkspur (Delphinium nudicaule) and magenta shooting-stars (Dodecatheon hendersonii) soften rocky banks. And, of course, the calypso orchids (Calypso bulbosa) nod like tiny pink stags below giant conifers.

So many more plants are blooming than I have space to list! The Marin Chapter of the California Native Plant Society keeps a log of sightings; they and several other groups lead hikes in the area. Or, just come out to the Mountain and see what’s up!

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Weed Watching

by Andrea Williams

Can you spot the weed in this picture? Then you could be a weed watcher!

It sounds as exciting as watching the grass grow, right? Weed watching is actually a lot like bird watching, except the weeds don’t move as much. And as an added bonus, the information collected by volunteer weed watchers can be used to help us keep Mt. Tamalpais the beautiful, diverse place we love to hike—and you gather that information while you hike!

Weed Watchers is a program to look for the worst plants in the best places. We know where the big patches of weeds are already, but finding new sites while they are still small saves time, saves money, and prevents the damage these plants can do. Plus, knowing where weeds aren’t is important in setting priorities. That’s where you can help. By signing up to be a weed watcher, you get training on the plants we’re most concerned about and how to map them (on paper maps or with a GPS). Then, you go out and hike! You can go with another weed watcher, by yourself, or with staff on a monthly guided saunter. You should have some knowledge of plants and be willing to collect data and deal with the paradox that a successful day means not finding anything!

We are accepting applications through the end of March. Click here for more information on the program.

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