Tree and Leaf

For more than a century and a half this venerable sycamore tree has stood near the edge of the Malibu Lagoon. It has survived fires, floods, and change, including the construction of Pacific Coast Highway. Now, developers propose chopping it down as a way of accommodating more traffic and more development in the Civic Center area.

"Not long ago—incredible though it may seem—I heard a clerk of Oxford declare that he 'welcomed' the proximity of mass-production robot factories, and the roar of self-obstructive traffic, because it brought his university into 'contact with real life.' 

"He may have meant that the way men were living and working in the twentieth century was increasing in barbarity at an alarming rate, and that the loud demonstration of this in the streets of Oxford might serve as a warning that it is not possible to preserve for long an oasis of sanity in a desert of unreason by mere fences, without actual offensive action (practical and intellectual). I fear he did not. 

"In any case, the expression 'real life' in this context seems to fall short of academic standards. The notion that motor-cars are more 'alive' than, say, centaurs or dragons is curious; that they are more 'real' than, say, horses is pathetically absurd. How real, how startlingly alive is a factory chimney compared with an elm tree: poor obsolete thing, insubstantial dream of an escapist!"

―J.R.R. Tolkien, Tree and Leaf 

 I like to think the Professor would have harsh words for a certain developer’s plan to remove an ancient sycamore tree from the side of Pacific Coast Highway, where it has grown since before the road was built. Everyone who has ever driven through Malibu has driven past that tree.  

I’ve been reading the supplemental Environmental Impact Report for the road widening project that is part of the La Paz shopping center development plan. In order to build the new 112,000 square-foot mall on undeveloped land next to the Malibu Library, PCH has to be widened to accommodate a longer/bigger turn lane for Cross Creek Road.

Here's a rendering of the La Paz shopping center, landscaped in the illustration not with native trees like sycamores but with tropical coral trees and jacarandas. Real Estate advisor firm for the project Richard J. Hill and Co.  states on their website that "We noted with great interest annual retail rental structures [in Malibu] exceeding $200.00 a square foot and rent to sales ratios that were non-economic." The firm, whose job is described as "to define and quantify the site’s retail potential, opportunities and challenges," also states: "The initial analysis defined Malibu as a cultural gateway, iconic brand showcase, and a portal into the lives of brand apostles in the entertainment and sports industries." This mission statement is at odds with the City of Malibu's, which states: "Malibu is a unique land and marine environment and residential community whose citizens have historically evidenced a commitment to sacrifice urban and suburban conveniences in order to protect that environment and lifestyle, and to preserve unaltered natural resources and rural characteristics." Chopping down a historic tree to make way for commercial real estate isn't a great way to "preserve unaltered natural resources." This disconnect perfectly demonstrates why the vast majority of Malibu voters endorsed Measure R, which restricts the number of chain stores and will require approval from the voters for all future large development projects.

EIRs are, unfortunately, a kind of game. Instead of being a tool to identify and solve environmental issues, all too often they end up being a collection of lame excuses.  The environmental community likes to say the developer hires a biologist to go out and sit in their car with the windows up, their eyes closed ,and their fingers in their ears, who will then report that they didn’t see or hear anything. 

The Millennium project in Hollywood is a great example of this sort of “we didn’t see it so it isn’t here” philosophy. The developers proposed building two massive apartment towers on a major earthquake fault. You can read about it here.  

It’s not usually quite that bad in the Malibu area, where the California Coastal Act and the local coastal program developed as a result of it, temper to some degree all projects. Although one recent EIR used a special concern plant and animal species list from another part of California—a handy way of making sure you don’t find anything on the list. 

The most spectacular omission lately is the site of a proposed housing development with Chumash artifacts in plain view on the surface. The Sierra Club brought in a local expert after the EIR preparers found nothing. The outside expert reported his finds to the Coastal Commission. It's hard to fathom how the expert hired by the company preparing the EIR somehow failed to notice he was standing in the middle of an archeological site. Perhaps there was a communication failure. Something like: “Oh, artifacts! I thought you wanted me to look for aardvarks.” 

In the La Paz EIR, the authors try to slide past the sycamore removal controversy by describing the massive tree as a “41-inch sycamore.”

If one goes to see “Attack of the 50-Foot Woman," one is expecting to see a movie about a giant. When one reads about a “41-inch tree,” the visual that is conveyed is a tree shorter than the average adult human.

In this case, the measurement is intended to indicate not height but diameter. However, one suspects that the authors of the EIR wouldn’t mind in the least if it makes the tree seem diminutive.  

Here's the "41-inch tree." It would be even more massive, but several large branches and a third stem have been removed over the years, and it has apparently been topped more than once. It stands between 50 and 60 feet tall today, but appears to have a larger canopy in old aerial photos. It reminds me of the comic book character Hellboy—the sawed-off branches and trunk resemble his horns and stone arm, and the whole shape is rather similar—maimed, but tough and and enduring. 

Mike Mingola's iconic comic book character Hellboy is almost indestructible and nearly immortal. Unfortunately, the Malibu sycamore tree is not.

Here's a quote from the introduction section of the EIR document:

These improvements would require the removal of one (1) existing 41" sycamore tree located southeast of the Pacific Coast Highway/Cross Creek intersection and five (5) existing eucalyptus trees located southwest of the Pacific Coast Highway/Cross Creek intersection. 

I don't see the word diameter in there, do you? It is mentioned later, once, on page four, but the initial and almost consistent omission throughout most of the document makes it sound like a small tree. 

Here's a look at the "41-inch" sycamore from the east side. The La Paz EIR does not include a report on the tree, but it appears to be thriving and is probably good for least another 100 years, given the chance to live.

The EIR never mentions that there are two stems of nearly equal girth. What that 41-inch diameter measurement means is that each stem of this tree has an almost 11-foot circumference. Diameter = circumference divided by pi: it’s the distance through the trunk, not around it. Describing this tree as a “41-inch sycamore” is disingenuous. 

The developers propose to replace this tree with 10 one-gallon seedling trees. The problem is, none of these trees will replace the existing giant in our lifetimes, because the tree that is scheduled for destruction is old—a true heritage tree.

It's going to take a long time for a one gallon seedling to replace the old sycamore tree, and once the old tree is gone, there won't be anything to screen the view of the Civic Center development, including the gas station sign, from the visitors at the Malibu Lagoon.

Using the US Forestry Service’s formula (using stem diameter, height, canopy dimensions and the estimated growth rate for the species) to determining the age of a tree—a challenge because one stem grows horizontally, yields a result that indicates this tree is around 160 years old.

Most longtime locals are familiar with this vintage postcard image from the late 1930s/early 1940s, but if you give it a second look, you can see our friend the tree—visible right before the bridge. This image is from the Eric Wienberg Collection of Malibu Matchbooks, Postcards, and Collectables, at Pepperdine University, and you can see it in much more detail on the Pepperdine site.

The date is an educated guess, based on the size of the tree and the known growth rate of the species. If it’s accurate, this tree has survived fires, floods and the construction of the highway. It would have sprouted during the 1850s, the era of the California gold rush. The Malibu Rancho was still a Spanish land grant property in the 1850s, belonging to French settler Leon Victor Prudhomme. This tree would have been fully grown when Frederick Hastings Rindge purchased the rancho in 1892. When PCH was constructed in 1929, it may have already been nearing the century mark.

The lone tree slightly to the left of center at the bottom of the photo is our sycamore in 1924, before the highway was constructed. You can view a larger version of this aerial photograph at the Adamson house archives. The tracks for the Rindge railroad are visible where PCH is now. 

One thing that can be documented beyond the shadow of a doubt is the presence of a large tree in that location in aerial photographs. The oldest aerial photo I could find is from 1924, shown above, but one can track the tree through the decades at the UCSB aerial photography archive, beginning in 1929, the year PCH was constructed. 

The Civic Center area in 1947, long before it was a "civic center." This fantastic aerial photograph is also preserved in the Pepperdine University digital archive.

Here's a close-up, showing the tree long before there was a Cross Creek Road. The photographer was shooting towards the lagoon, which is why the tree is on the "wrong" side of the highway. 

Malibu has a dismal record on historic preservation. While much of the most egregious destruction occurred before the community incorporated as a city, we’ve allowed developers to bulldoze and demolish our heritage—Chumash sites, ranch-era buildings, WW II history, mid-century modern architecture, and natural resources, including ocean views, open space, ridgelines and trees. 

Frederick Hastings Rindge, who bought the Malibu Rancho from Matthew Keller in 1892, wrote about a number of local heritage trees:

One great oak in Ramirez Canyon, of massive size and great gnarled trunk, we call  Abraham’s Oak, in remembrance of the ancient oak in Palestine of the same name, so called because it was thought to have lived in Abraham’s day. Many the time have I wished that grand old oak to make me his confidant and revel the secrets of the past. 

In Soston [Solstice] Canyon about twenty-five young oaks are growing close together, and their tops blending in foliage make a great umbrella-shaped roof, a fine house. The birds love these trees.

In Trancos [sic] Canyon I know a noble oak whose boughs almost reach the ground, and on all the branches, even the lower ones, within your reach, are scores of nests. It is really a compound bird-nursery.

None of these trees are there now.

It isn't as grand a tree as Rindge's "Abraham oak," but this Ramirez Canyon tree is one of the surviving canyon giants. When I was a child this oak stood at the edge of a horse paddock, and was the subject of many tall tales, ranging from ghost stories to wild west hangings. It is now in a flowerbed island surrounded by pavement at the entrance to a mansion, but at least it is still standing, proving that solutions can be found.

Trees are a lot easier to cut down then they are to grow—hundreds of years of living history can be obliterated in minutes with a chainsaw.

The sycamore isn't the only tree scheduled for demolition on PCH at the lagoon. Part of the row of 70-year-old eucalyptus trees that for more than three generations have provided shade for surfers and other beachgoers parked on PCH are headed for the chopping block. Like the sycamore, you can trace their history in the aerial photography record. Unlike the sycamore, they aren't native trees, but they are large and old and picturesque. 

A postcard from the late 1950s shows the sycamore and the row of eucalyptus trees, front and center, part of "Malibu Beach" history, soon to be history if Malibu residents don't speak out. This image is also from Pepperdine University's stellar digital archive.

I'll miss them when they are gone. The surfers will miss the access to free parking underneath them, along the stretch of highway closest to the Malibu Lagoon State Beach entrance, which apparently is also going to be a casualty of this project.

The trees and many of the surfers' cars will have to go if the developers get their way. The surf was up the day I took this photo and cars were double and triple parked all along this stretch of PCH. 

The road widening project may or may not help with the traffic situation in the Civic Center area. It would be nice if the plan could be completed in a way that doesn’t require the destruction of the sycamore or the eucalyptus trees. 

It will be unfortunate if the trees are removed and the city decides to adopt the Civic Center Design Standards Task Force’s idea of making the traffic on Civic Center Way and Cross Creek one way only, negating the necessity for the removal.

This postcard from the late 1940s shows the row of eucalyptus trees just a few years after they were planted. Aerial photos from 1944 show no trees except for the sycamore, by 1947, the trees are clearly visible. A post WW II date like 1945 sounds reasonable for the year of planting. That would make them 70 years old today.

It’s depressing that developers continue to have the financial leverage to push ill-conceived projects through, while environmental and conservation activists struggle on shoestring budgets.

It would undoubtedly be a better world if developers and their investors could learn to care about more than the bottom line, but it probably isn’t realistic to expect some kind of epiphany, not when the "apostles" preach the gospel of "iconic brands" (what does that even mean?). However, it is still not too late to save the trees. 

The Planning Commission hearing on this phase of the project is scheduled for June 2 and the public comment period is open until May 21. The entire document is available here.

Comments can be submitted to: 

Planning Commission 
c/o Kathleen Stecko, Recording Secretary
kstecko@malibucity.org
23825 Stuart Ranch Road
Malibu, CA 90265

Many of us who love Malibu see it as the Professor saw Oxford, as "an oasis of sanity in a desert of unreason." Some days it feels like that desert is encroaching on us despite all of our efforts to hold it back, but that doesn't mean we can't keep fighting for the things that are important.

Suzanne Guldimann
17 May 2015

The Tune Without the Words

Charcoal gray gulls fill the air with a rush of wings on the last evening of April at Westward Beach. This species, Larus heermanni, or Heermann's gull, is abundant on Malibu's beaches in late spring, but it's also near threatened, with a population estimated at just 150,000 breeding pairs. It's a reminder that many of the things we take for granted here in Malibu are rare and remarkable. All photos © 2015 S. Guldimann

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul, 

And sings the tune without the words, 

And never stops at all, 

And sweetest in the gale is heard; 

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm. 

 I’ve heard it in the chillest land, 

And on the strangest sea; 

Yet, never, in extremity, 

It asked a crumb of me.

—Emily Dickinson

The tune without the words, the song of hope, is everywhere in Malibu in May. In the garden, morning is a symphony—and sometimes a cacophony—of bird calls: the oriole ticks and clicks like an overactive geiger counter, the parrots in the neighbor's palm tree exchange opinions with the crows in the eucalyptus tree and the oak titmouse alternates between announcing "sweet, I'm sweet!" and scolding the resident blue jay with a cry that sounds like "cheater, cheater, cheater." At dusk the sky is full of the rush of swallow wings and the silent acrobatics of the bats. 

The beautiful hooded oriole is a frequent garden bird, but it is shy and often more likely to be heard than seen. Its call is a combination of ticks and twitters that sound like a geiger counter.

All along Westward Beach and Surfrider, thousands of  elegant terns swirl and call, transforming the scene into a tableau from a snow globe, and the pelicans have returned, too, graceful, huge and pterodactyl-like.

A flock of California brown pelicans takes to the sky. You can see the little puffs of sand kicked up as they launch themselves into the air with powerful wings. Brown pelicans really are giants, their wingspan ranges from six to eight feet.

Last week, it seemed that there were just a few of each, this week, hundreds have gathered at Zuma and Surfrider. Flights of pelicans can be spotted all along the coast and the clamor of cries from the huge convention of terns at Surfrider can be heard from PCH.

The sky fills with the sleek white wings of the aptly-named elegant terns.

Like the Heermann's gulls, the terns have returned from their breeding grounds in Baja. And like the gulls, the elegant tern  is also listed by the IUCN (the International Union of Conservation for Nature) as near threatened, although you wouldn't know it to look at the numbers currently present in Malibu. 

A group of elegant terns gather on the sand at Westward Beach.

May is also a good time to look for more unusual species. There were stilts in the main channel of Malibu Creek this week—wading birds with impossibly long, thin, pink legs, and a pair of white-faced ibises—a species this bird watcher had never seen in person before. The brants were there, too—small wild geese stopping for a rest on their way north, but the terns and the pelicans are the most conspicuous harbingers of summer. 

A trio of brants—small, short-billed wild geese—dabble in the main channel of Malibu Creek. 

These are white-faced ibises. The photo doesn't do their spectacular iridescent plumage and bright pink eyes and legs justice. I know the ibis is the symbol of the ancient Egyptian god of wisdom, Thoth, but they looked more like something out of Lewis Carroll to me.

While I was trying to get a good shot of the ibises I was photobombed by an black-necked stilt, another candidate for a Wonderland native.

The pelicans and terns were late this year. The crash in the sardine population that is being blamed for the sea lion unusual mortality event may be responsible for that, but its grunion season now, and the tiny silver fish that spawn on the beach at the new moon in spring and summer are essential for marine mammals and sea birds.

Grunion will be running almost every night during the first week of May this year, thanks to the full moon. The May grunion run is an opportunity for to observe, not join the feast.  The first three months of the grunion breeding season are off limits to human fishers to give the fish a break. It's a bonanza for birds and marine mammals, with many diurnal species showing up in the middle of the night to take advantage of an all-you-can-eat fish dinner. 

Raccoon footprints in the mud near the mouth of Malibu Creek indicate grunion may have been on the menu for more than sea birds.

Here is the May grunion run schedule. Click here to see the Department of Fish and Wildlife's entire 2015 grunion run time chart. 

4 5 6 7 18 19 20 21

Mo 10:00 p.m. - Midnight Tu 10:30 p.m. - 12:30 a.m. We 11:05 p.m. - 1:05 a.m. Th 11:45 p.m. - 1:45 a.m. Mo 10:00 p.m. - Midnight Tu 10:40 p.m. - 12:40 a.m. We 11:20 p.m. - 1:20 a.m. Th 12:05 a.m. - 2:05 a.m.*

For the struggling sea lion population, the arrival of the grunion couldn't come too soon, and the tiny silver fish also attract common and bottlenose dolphins—absent for much of the spring due to the lack of bait fish, back to the Malibu coast. 

Sea lion pups rescued by the California Wildlife Center, being treated for malnutrition and dehydration in March.

Two of the same CWC sea lions, healthy again and headed back to the ocean for a second chance. You can read about the release event, and view more photos here.

Grunion are an essential food source for the Malibu Country Mart's colony of egrets and herons, too. Raccoons, coyotes and the ever opportunistic crows joining in on the fish feast. You never know what you'll see on a grunion night, darkness and silence, or something extraordinary. 

Harried egret parents are taking advantage of the spring grunion run to provide food for their young. Nesting real estate at the Malibu Country Mart was at a premium this year. The ficus trees at the shopping center that are the favorite rookery—or heronry—for snowy and great egrets and black-crowned night herons, were pruned hard over the winter. The foliage is just starting to grow back, but there's at least a few nests like this one, which is already full of hungry and vociferous nestlings. 

May is the time of rebirth, of love and joy and exuberance, of hope, but in Malibu it also brings a sense of loss. It's the end of the gray whale migration. All through the winter there’s the chance—and the hope—that a morning walk or a trip to the beach at sunset will offer a sight of whales. When the last few stragglers have left the warm southern seas and sailed past Point Dume on their way home to the arctic it feels as if some essential magic has gone with them. 

A gray whale and her calf pause at Zuma Beach on the long journey north to the arctic circle.

For me, part of that is grounded in the fact that when I was a child there was the very real fear that the whales would go and not come back. Whales still need protection, they face serious threats that range from pollution to ship strikes and Navy sonar, but they are still here, thanks to passionate conservation advocates who fought and continue to fight for their right to live.

There's an added poignancy in Malibu, since Point Dume was the location of the last commercial whaling operation in California. A total of 250 California gray whales were caught, killed and diced into dog food off Paradise Cove. 

In 2014, the City of Malibu passed a proclamation supporting the safe passage of Marine Mammals:

Whereas, whales and dolphins are known to be highly intelligent and emotional creatures that live in families and other social groupings, associations that last for most, if not all, of their lives and therefore deserve the right to their own freedom and lives.

The proclamation was a purely symbolic gesture, since the city has no authority over anything below the mean high tide line, but it was the first time an American city has officially recognized the right of cetaceans to live undisturbed.

A pair of bottlenose dolphins swim past Point Dume, enjoying freedom and life.

May is a reminder that that things can change for the better. The California brown pelican, the snowy and great egret and the gray whale have all been snatched back from the edge of extinction. The tern's fate is less certain, despite special protections in California, but there's hope for it. There's hope for everything. The "tune without the words" is the anthem of the conservation movement.  

While it's fun and interesting to observe the natural world, it can also be important. We have to know what is there if we are going to protect it. And appreciating it isn't enough, we have to fight for it, too. So there will continue to be grunion, and sea lions, and dolphins, and so there will still be terns in May, and the whales will return in December—this year, and next year, and a hundred years from now. 

“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”

― Jane Goodall  

Suzanne Guldimann

1 May 2015

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.