Go and Catch a Falling Star

Padre's shooting star, Primula clevelandii: is a beautiful, ethereal and ephemeral native wildflower that blooms in winter and is one of the first harbingers of spring in Malibu and throughout the Santa Monica Mountains.

Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.


—John Donne, "Song"

In a wet year, shooting stars flourish, covering whole hillsides with delicate pink stars. 

It's easy to catch a shooting star in Malibu in February, when Padre's shooting star, a beautiful and ephemeral native wildflower, blooms, but this flowering is short-lived. Look fast to catch a glimpse of this rare beauty.

You know how they always tell you to memorize the scientific names of plants because thay remain constant? That is not also so. Padre's shooting star was recently reclassified from Dodecatheon clevelandii to Primula clevelandii. The change to primula highlight's this flower's place in the primrose family. Like garden varieties of primrose, P. clevelandii grows from a rosette of leaves. Clevelandii is in honor of San Diego civic leader and avid amateur naturalist Daniel Cleveland.

Daniel Cleveland (1838-1929) founded banks, facilitated railroads, hospitals, schools, libraries—buying 2000 books to start a San Diego library, and co-founded the Natural History Society of San Diego. In return, he is remembered in a host of scientific names for California flora and fauna, including Primula clevelandii.

Spring of 2020 isn't going to be a super bloom—early rain dried out quickly, leaving poor conditions for most wildflowers, but the shooting stars got an early start and are experiencing a moderately strong year.  I photographed this field of stars on the Conejo Valley side of the Santa Monica Mountains. This species likes the kind of north-facing hillside with rain seepage. Because it blooms early, it rarely faces competition from other plants.

Padre's shooting stars range from soft pink to cherry pink to almost white. This is the only member of the primula family in the Santa Monica Mountains, but  that pen-nib-shaped flower is a reminder that the exotic-looking cyclamens one buys at the nursery for a bit of winter color in the house are also members of the primula family.

An almost white shooting star. The only one in a vast field of pink.

You are more likely to spot this beautiful wildflower on the north side of the Santa Monica Mountains, especially in volcanic soils. This is a protected species, so please take only photographs and be careful not to step on the rosettes of leaves—this species is sensitive to soil compression and won't bloom again if it is trampled.

Shooting stars grow from a basal rosette of leaves. Like the garden variety of primrose, this plant is "spring deciduous," dying back after blooming and regrowing from its roots after the first winter rains.

The star-like flowers quickly turn into balloon-like seed capsules. When the seeds are mature, the capsule bursts open, shooting the seeds far and wide like a mini catapult.

The previous year's flower skeletons can provide a welcome clue of where to look for flowers the following year.

This year's flowers blooming among the ghosts of last year's bloom.

So, go and catch a shooting star, but hurry, because like the celestial phenomenon this beautiful flower is named for, it is a fleeting beauty, and this year's flowering will be shorter than usual due to dry conditions and drying winds. 

At the risk of jinxing myself by putting it in print, I'm hoping this post will be the first in a new series of natural history posts in 2020. If you enjoy the Malibu Post, blog please follow us on Instagram @malibupost, check out www.messengermountainnews.com, where I write biweekly articles on nature, history and the environment, and look for a second volume of my book "Life in Malibu," arriving in time for the holidays.

Thanks for reading! Hope to see you here again soon,

Suzanne Guldimann

Malibu

February 12, 2020

Six Months Later: Life in the Aftermath of the Woolsey Fire

The Woolsey Fire swept through Malibu on November 9, 2018. This is Lower Corral Canyon on November 29, after the first post-fire rain. Although it looks as desolate as Mordor, the rainbow in the sky promises renewal.

It has been half a year since the Woolsey Fire. Many people are still in shock, struggling with loss, or with the loss experienced by loved ones. We are all still trying to process the magnitude of the disaster.

At the Malibu Post we were among the lucky ones who had a home to return to because our neighbors stayed and fought the fire, but it is still difficult. So many friends and neighbors lost their homes. So much was destroyed. Every day life was complicated by no electricity for weeks, no landline for months, road closures, flood warnings, dust and ashes every time the wind blew. 

As a journalist, I spent a lot of time in the middle of disaster zone reporting on the news. I spent even more time there in dreams each night, walking through that hellish landscape of incinerated trees and houses and ashy piles of bones (that's not an exaggeration, there were piles of bones all over the mountains after the fire). It was hard not to think about the fire all the time when everything was covered in ash, and even a short trip through the neighborhood was a drive through a war zone. Waking in the morning wasn't much better.  The view out the window revealed a blacked panorama of scorched mountains.

Corral Canyon, January 2, 2019.

Malibu may never be the same, but after nearly six months it is getting better. Recovery will be a long process, one that has only just begun. Debris is being cleared. Residents who lost their homes struggle with the lengthy, complex, and often frustrating process of rebuilding, but at least the process has begun, however difficult and labyrinthine. Nature is also undergoing a rebuilding process, one aided by the restorative rain this winter.

Corral Canyon, February 20, 2019.

Some neighbors may never return—their losses are too great to be overcome. Others are cautiously optimistic, the horror of the fire tempered by thoughts filled with plans for the future again. And everywhere the rain has helped soften the appearance of the burn scar with new growth. Wildflowers, even the non-native and ubiquitous mustard, have cloaked the damage with color and beauty. 

Corral Canyon, March 24, 2019.

I took more than 10,000 photos of the fire and its aftermath. It's still hard for me to look at some of them, but we are only six months into the recovery from what has been Los Angeles County's worst fire disaster. We've come a long way in the time. We still have a long hard road ahead of us, but all around us the natural environment has begun to heal. 

This tiny sprout is Chlorogalum pomeridianum, the soap plant or soap lily, spotted growing in upper Trancas Canyon on December 4. This was the first new growth I observed in the burn zone.

It is hard to imagine anything alive in this scorched and blasted landscape, but just weeks after the fire, new life was stirring here, too. the vast network of chaparral roots that remained in the soil help stabilize the hillsides and quickly jumpstart the recovery of many key plants. In undisturbed mountain soil there is also a bank of seeds that may have been produced decades earlier following previous fire. These are the fire followers, annual wildflowers with seeds that can remain dormant in the soil for years, but that sprout after the first rains following a fire. These plants will recharge the seed bank and provide food and shelter for surviving wildlife, but they also generate nutrients for a critically important network of micro and macro fungi that is essential for the survival of the chaparral plant community. Without this invisible web, recovery would be impossible.

Laurel sumac has deep, deep roots that help stabilize the mountainsides and provide a critical reserve of water and nutrients for this fire-adapted plant, enabling it to begin regrowth almost immediately after a wildfire. I spotted this first sprout at the location in the photo above on December 12, just a month after the fire.

Like the laurel sumac, wild cucumber—Marah macrocarpa, also called man root, has massive reserves of nutrients and water stored safely underground. It is one of the first plants to sprout after a fire, and its abundant white flowers are a blessing for native pollinators following a disaster like this one, where so many acres of habitat were incinerated.

This is the same lookout point above Zuma Canyon on May 1, 2019, re-greened and covered in phacelia grandiflora, one of the true fire-following wildflowers.

Fire following wildflowers that have appeared in the months after the wildfire include:

Larkspur—Delphinium parryi

Wind poppies—Papaver heterophyllum.

Fire poppy Papaver Californium (shown here with the tiny, strong-scented white flowers of eucrypta, another fire follower)

Globe lily—Calochortus albus.

Catalina mariposa lilies—Calochortus catalinae.

Phacelia grandiflora (shown here with a photo-bombing native pollinator).

Phacelia parryi.

Sticky phacelia—Phacelia viscida.

Caterpillar phacelia—Phacelia cicutaria, and one of the thoundreds and thousands of painted lady butterflies that have been another miracle of the cycle of fire, rain and regrowth this spring.

Fields of California poppies bloomed throughout the Santa Monica Mountains.

...And entire hillsides of lupine, acres and acres of heavenly blue, growing out of the dust and ashes of the Woolsey Fire.

The post-fire superbloom that has covered the burned hills in a rainbow of living color may be mostly over, but the seeds set by these flowers will recharge the native wildflower seed bank in the soil. And there will be more fire-related wildflowers still to come: perennials that are growing now and will bloom next year, like bush poppy—Dendromecon rigida, and Trichostema lanatum—wooly blue curls, and late bloomers like Coulter's snapdragon and white bleeding hearts. The transformation has lifted human spirits in aftermath of this disaster. The flowers will fade, but they have been a blessing, a daily reminder of how far we have come in so short a time.

Here's a summary of the past six months from no farther away than our own home:

The view we see every morning out of our window includes a transmission tower on the ridge between Latigo and Corral canyons. Here's what that transmission tower looked like on the morning of November 9, 2019, and during the past six months:

November 9, 2019. Fire races up the mountain...

...And down the other side.

November 21, 2018. Gray and ashy as the surface of the moon.

December 12,  after the first rains. 

February 20, 2019.

March 20. Non-native mustard is growing where the soil has been disturbed, but on the slopes that are too steep for bulldozes and discing machines, native wildflowers like lupine thrive.

April 29, 2019. 

The view may never again look exactly like it did before—this is May of 2017, a year and half before the Woolsey fire, but also a decade after the earlier Corral Fire. Things are getting better, each day moves us farther away from the nightmare. 

Rebuilding after a wildfire is difficult. Recovery is slow. Many people are still experiencing grief and loss, or frustration and anger, but we are getting through it, together, one day at a time. For me, the dreams are less frequent now. When I look out of my window I still see one last sad chimney, but I also see green hills turning dusty gold as the rainy season ends. The familiar view of our much loved Malibu mountains isn't a wasteland anymore.

"...What I knew was that the earth underneath was alive and that by tomorrow, certainly by the day after, it would be all green again." —Norman MacLean, A River Runs Through It, and Other Stories

Lower Corral Canyon on the last day of April, 2019, almost six months after the Woolsey Fire.

The Fire of Spring

A sea of golden coreopsis frames the view up the coast from Zuma to Sequit Point from Point Dume Nature Preserve. All photos © 2015 S. Guldimann

Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
The Winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter—and the Bird is on the Wing.

—Edward Fitzgerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám

Wildflower season—a "fire of spring" that sweeps over the hills in a blaze not of flames but of living color—arrived in late winter this year, bursting with spectacular but ephemeral bloom. Easter was early this year, too, arriving at the apex of the wildflower display in the Santa Monica Mountains.

The weather experts warn that we are still many inches of rain below normal, but here in Malibu we received twice as much precipitation as last year, and it was enough to generate a spectacular crop of wildflowers, including an abundance of some seldom seen beauties.

The winter green and lush flowers are already being transformed by the alchemy of hot weather and Santa Ana winds into summer gold, despite one last April shower, but it's not too late to look for wildflowers. 

Lupin covers a hillside burned in the 2013 Springs Fire, in just one of the many spectacular displays of local wildflowers this spring. Many fire followers bloomed early and have already vanished, but many wildflowers are still blooming in the burn zone, including vivid purple and blue phacelia species.

I wrote a 2015 guide to spring flowers for the March 13 issue of the Malibu Surfside News, but the unfolding tapestry of spring keeps revealing new and marvelous things, and one doesn't have to go far to find remarkable sights.

In the time that it took me to put this post together, the giant coreopsis flowers at the Point Dume Headlands have given way entirely to bush sunflowers, but there are still plenty of Malibu wildflowers to see, as the season continues to unfold.

Golden stars are currently at peak bloom at Malibu Bluffs Park Open Space. The giant coreopsis is almost entirely gone to seed at Point Dume Nature Preserve, but bush sunflower is in full bloom, and morning glories, sand verbena and evening primroses are still blooming. At Charmlee Wilderness Park, the meadow is full of orange and yellow deerweed and purple sage, and all through the mountains there are pockets of owl clover, goldfields, poppies, blue larkspur and the pagoda-shaped pale pink flowers called Chinese houses. 

If you know where to look, you may still be treated to the spectral white beauty of globe lilies, or the exotic magenta flowers of Indian warrior. Many spring wildflowers are truly ephemeral—blooming for just a few days before vanishing completely, but while flowers like padre's shooting stars and chocolate lilies bloomed and vanished before spring officially arrived, the season for flowers like clarkia, penstemon, and the towering spires of orange Humboldt lilies is just beginning.

Here's a look at some of this year's spring treasures.

A river of flowers cascades down a hillside along Mulholland Highway. 

That river is comprised of white California popcorn flower—a member of the borage family, California poppies and masses of owl clover.

Here's a closer look at the tiny owl faces that give owl clover its name. Owl clover isn't really a clover at all, it's a castilleja, a member of the same family as Indian paintbrush, and like the paintbrush it's partially parasitic, using the roots of grasses and other flowers as a source of nutrients. Owl clover only flourishes in a year when there are plenty of host plants, but when conditions are right, this little purple flower can be spectacular, carpeting whole hillsides. 

Indian paintbrush is the more familiar species of castilleja in the Santa Monica Mountains, but this year there seems to be a lot of Indian warrior, Pedicularis densiflora, as well. Both species are hemi-parasitic, just like like the owl clover, and depend on host plant for nutrients. Indian Warrior reportedly prefers manzanita or chamise, but this one was growing under a clump of scrub oak. 

Owl clover, California goldfields and wild hyacinth dazzle the eye along Pentachaeta Trail, in Trifuno Creek Park, just over the mountain from Malibu in Westlake Village. This trail, on the north side of the mountain, is arguably one of the best wildflower walks in the Santa Monica Mountains. This area is in full bloom right now, while most of the wildflowers on the more exposed south side of the mountain already finished blooming last month.

In a good year, California goldfields, Lasthenia californica, transforms whole hillsides into cloth of gold. 

In additional to field flowers like owl clover and poppies, there's been an extraordinary crop of flowers that grow from native bulbs and corms this year. This beautiful wild brodiaea has been especially abundant. It's common name is, regrettably, blue dicks, from the Latin Dichelostemma. It's also called "purplehead," which isn't much better. I like the other common name, wild hyacinth, although this flower isn't related to the true hyacinth. In fact, the brodiaea genus belongs to the asparagus family. The corms and the flowers of this species are edible. The Chumash developed a variety of techniques for encouraging this plant to grow, and it was an important food source and trade item. It must also be a tasty source of nectar—it always attracts large numbers of butterflies, including this painted lady butterfly—Vanessa cardui.

Here's another beautiful native brodiaea. This one belongs to the genus triteleia and is graced with nicer names than its blue cousin: golden star and prettyface. At Malibu Bluffs Park Open Space, golden star usually blooms together with the Catalina mariposa, but this year, the mariposas were the first to bloom. This was the first golden star I found at Bluffs Park this spring, blooming alone among the mariposas. By Easter, when the mariposas were almost finished, an entire constellation of golden stars was flowering at the  the park.

Rare Catalina Mariposa lilies, Calochortus Catalinae, bloomed in abundance at Malibu Bluffs Park Open Space this year. Although the main flowering is over at Bluffs, there are still patches like these flowers lining this steep trail that leads to a Malibu Road public beach easement. 

 

Catalina mariposa lilies and golden stars bloom together at Bluffs Park.

This mariposa was growing right beside Pacific Coast Highway. Unfortunately, unlike the plants at Bluffs Park Open Space, this colony isn't located on parkland. Instead it's on the site of a future housing development. Rapid habitat loss is the reason this strikingly beautiful wildflower is on the California list of species of special concern.

The white globe lily, Calochortus albus, is a close relative of the Catalina mariposa, but this species has managed to avoid landing on the special concern list, possibly because you won't find this beauty blooming on ocean view coastal bluffs. It's a shade dweller, usually found only in the more remote canyons, where is grows under the protective shelter of larger shrubs. Globe lily is a small flower, but it is almost luminous. Appropriately, it's other common name is fairy lantern.

You may find globe lilies growing near Collinsia heterophylla. Like the globe lily, this wildflower thrives in the shade of the scrub oaks, where it can transform a shady glade into a fairytale illustration. Collinsia's pagoda-like flowers give it its common name: Chinese houses.    

Secluded canyons are also the favored habitat of the chocolate lily, but this is one flower that bloomed early this year and has already completely vanished until next rainy season.

The rarest flower seen on The Malibu Post's spring wildflower ramblings so far this year? This inconspicuous yellow daisy, Pentachaeta lyonii. It may not look like much, but this tiny plant is a federally listed species, and its presence helped save 600-acre Triunfo Canyon Park from being bulldozed for a housing development.

Among the most beautiful sights this spring is the host of brilliantly colored butterflies attracted to the wildflowers. This is a red admiral, pausing for a half a second to sip nectar from a wild hyacinth.

The National Park Service's Santa Monica Mountains What's Blooming website offers updates (somewhat sporadic, because its author recently moved out of state, but still helpful) on where to find wildflowers. It also provides links to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area calendar of events, and the excellent SMMNRA wildflower guide and app. 

Desert USA's Southern California wildflower report page often includes the local area, in addition to a wide range of stellar wildflower locations, including the Antelope Valley and other parts of the Mojave.

As always, the best way to see wildflowers is to go out and look for them. Just don't wait too long to start, because, as the poet warns, the bird is on the wing...

S. Guldimann

7 April 2015

Spring doesn't linger for long in Malibu. The winter crop of silver puffs, Stebbinoseris heterocarpa, at Bluffs Park has already transformed from pale flowers to luminous spheres of seed, ready for the wind to disperse.