White is a popular hue for flowers. It's the thickest part of the Peterson's guides, which are arranged by color. I guess it does a good job of attracting a wide variety of pollinators - beetles, flies, moths. But it's getting tiresome, so I promise some color after these!
Here we have California wild cuccumbers (Marah fabaceous), one of about 5 species in the Pacific State. Coast wild cuccumber (M. oreganus) is almost identical, but the fruits look different. These plants are viney and sprawly, with tendril ringlets galore and pretty little star-shaped flowers. Don't get any ideas about putting the wild cuccumber fruits on your salad. The little round "melons" are golf-ball-sized and covered with spikes. Let the spikes be fair warning, they're disgustingly bitter. Mara, I've learned, is hebrew for bitter. But, on the plus side, the large seeds inside are smooth and pretty. Marah are also known as "manroot" because their tuberous roots reach enormous proportions (up to 100kg!) and have thick limb-like sections that can be imagined into the shape of a human. These plants have numerous medicinal and practical uses employed by native americans - too numerous to get into here. But like most medicinal plants, they can be toxic. Research well before preparing your owl natural remedies!
And this...? Those 4-petaled flowers and long skinny seed pods (siliques) say Brassicaeae (mustard family) to me, and it looks a lot like Cardamine californica, but it looks so different, too, outsdide of the shade of the redwoods. This was in a swampy section near some willows at Spring Ranch. I'm not sure on this one yet. I'll have to go back to have a closer look.
Photos from March 29.
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