Pond Update

I Mentioned in my last post that there are a couple of frogs in my pond but I had never seen them.  Well, now I have. Thanks to my niece and her husband, we were able to find the frogs at sunset one evening. Here's a couple of photos. 

I'm really happy to finally be able to see them. For those interested in what type of frog this is, I have learned that it is Pseudacris hypochondriaca, or Baja California Tree Frog. 

Pond Party

By special request from one of my three followers, this post will feature changes to my pond in recent months. I had been dissatisfied with my pond for a couple of years. One problem with ponds is the appearance of the liner. It looks very unnatural and it isn't easy to disguise it. The liner is typically black and very smooth. If you have a rock edging, the space between the water and the rocks will be visible, and it looks wrong. Below is a photo of what it looked like when first completed. 

You can see the liner and it just makes the whole thing look fake. Also, I used flagstone as the edging and it doesn't look great either.  Later, the plants filled in and it looked better. 

Fast Forward to 2019. I decided to give the pond a makeover. Here's how it looks now.

I removed some of the flagstone and put in boulders. This helped a lot. The next step was to figure out how to disguise the liner. After trying several ideas that didn't work, I hit on a great product. It's a spray foam that is used as a filler and insulation in plumbing and other wet areas. I sprayed it onto the liner to give it some texture. Then I painted it to resemble dirt. Here's a closeup:

 

I think it's a pretty good imitation of a natural earth bank.

About the same time that I was able to get some tadpoles and I put them into the pond. They immediately disappeared. To my surprise, they turned into frogs and now they serenade us every night. The funny thing is that I have never seen them. They are really good at hiding in the daytime. At night if I take one step outside they stop croaking and once again it is impossible to find them.

One of the aquatic plants in the pond is Ludwigia. I'm not sure which species this is. A couple of species are native to California and several are not. Anyway, it produces long runners that stretch out across the pond. It is now putting out some flowers:

A lot of critters use the pond. Raccoons come out at night and wash their food. Birds come around all day to drink, take a bath and eat flying insects. Lately I have seen some tiny water skimmers skating around on the surface. My favorites, though, are the dragonflies. There are the big red ones that have been coming around for more than 20 years and laying eggs every summer. Now I have been seeing a big green one. A few days ago I found this one struggling on the surface of the water.

You can see in this photo that one of its wings is undersized and deformed, and that's why it was struggling. It was unable to fly and it did not survive. Still I hope there will be more of them around.

That's the pond report for today.

Time for a Photo Extravaganza

March and April are definitely the months when my plants look their best. I want to get photos of them all, and the best way to showcase them is in a tightly cropped closeup. So that's what this post will consist of.

Prunus ilicifolia lyonii from the Channel Islands

Salvia brandegeei from the Channel Islands

Allium haematichiton growing in container

Dendromecon harfordii from the Channel Islands

I would call this Mimulus aurantiacus

I would call this Mimulus guttatus, a plant of streamsides and damp places

Baby Blue Eyes, Nemophila menziesii

Arroyo Lupine, Lupinus succulentus

Goldenstar, Bloomeria crocea

Tidy Tips, Layia platyglossa

Blue-eyed Grass, Sisyrinchium bellum

I think it is Polypodium californicum

Used to be known as Potentilla, now known as Drymocallis glandulosa

Euphorbia misera, an underappreciated plant from Baja and south San Diego

I would call this Dichelostemma capitatum

Heuchera maxima from the Channel Islands

Geranium sp.

Mirabilis laevis

Clarkia unguiculata

Purple Sage, Salvia leucophylla

Baja Fairyduster, Calliandra californica

New Stuff

Yesterday a neighbor who is active in the San Diego chapter of CNPS emailed me to say that she had a bunch of seedlings to get rid of. She grew them to give out at the last chapter meeting, but there was no meeting thanks to Covid 19. So she was looking for good homes for these babies. I got over there as fast as I could, even though I have no room for any new plants.

She had a bunch of good plants. First up is Lupinus hirsutissimus (stinging lupine). It has really sharp, stinging hairs like nettle except that the stinging only happens when you are in contact with the plant, whereas nettle can continue to sting for hours after you touch it. Aside from the stinging hairs, it's an attractive lupine that is found in local chaparral.

Next is Phacelia cicutaria (caterpillar phacelia). All the Phacelias have attractive flowers in the blue to purple end of the spectrum. This one has pale lavender flowers in a typical scorpioid (coiled) inflorescence, and some of mine are already blooming. This Phacelia has hairs on the stem but they are soft and not stinging.

I put two Phacelias in an old bucket, along with a couple of baby blue eyes.

Number 3 on my list is Diplacus (formerly Mimulus) pictus (calico monkeyflower). This species is from the western Sierra foothills, so it isn't really native to here. However, it has an irresistible little flower with elaborate maroon markings.

I put 5 of these in a pot along with a couple of blue-eyed grass. Calscape says it grows in forest and woodland habitat, in open, bare, rocky, and often disturbed areas. I can't really provide that kind of habitat, so I just hope it is happy in this pot.

The last of the annuals is Plantago erecta (dotseed plantain). It's a grass-like plant that is unassuming to look at but ecologically very important.

Its value come from being the primary host plant for several butterfly species in the Euphydryas genus (checkerspots). Host plant means that the butterfly lays its eggs on the plant and the caterpillars eat it. The local Euphydryas subspecies is called the quino checkerspot (E. editha quino) and it is in serious trouble.

The Center for Biological Diversity says "Historically, this butterfly was distributed throughout the coastal slopes of southern California, from Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Diego, and San Bernardino counties southward to El Rosario in northern Baja California, Mexico. Its historic distribution included the westernmost slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains, the Los Angeles plain, and the Transverse Ranges to the edge of the upper Anza-Borrego desert...Formerly one of the most common butterflies in southern California, the Quino checkerspot now inhabits only eight areas in southwestern Riverside and southern San Diego counties and four in Baja. Of these, all but three populations contained fewer than five individual butterflies in 2000." 

Photo by Andrew Fisher

In the past Plantago erecta was equally widespread, but it's range has been reduced by agriculture and urban/suburban development. I don't pretend that my little container of Plantago is going to attract any quino checkerspots because they no longer exist in the Encinitas area, but I like the plant and what it represents. I hope it will spread itself all through my garden.


The above plants are annuals, so they may come back next year or they may not. Of course, I hope they do. One other more plant that I got is a perennial vine, Lathyrus splendens (campo pea). There are several genera and species of vining pea plants in San Diego county, and splendens has the most showy flowers. Found mostly in Baja, it comes into the southern part of San Diego county, so it is not truly native to Encinitas, but close enough. Here is what it looks like now.

It is likely to be a few years before my plants produce any flowers, so here's a photo I got from the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center.

Photo by W.D. and Dolphia Bransford

Three Yellow Bloomers

As expected, more plants are beginning to produce flowers. The first is Ribes aureum (golden currant). I didn't really plant it. Or rather, I did plant one in this part of the yard more than ten years ago. It didn't appear to survive. In 2011 we did some work on our house which involved completely scraping that area. After that I replanted the area, and somehow the Ribes came up by itself. Maybe the old one left some seeds in the soil. In any case, it has done very well for the last couple of years. In the wild it is native to areas north of here, with only one reported location in San Diego County. But it seems happy in my garden for now.

The plant has nice leaves as well. It prefers a shady area and just a bit more water than other chaparral plants.

The second yellow flower for today is Leptosyne gigantea (giant coreopsis). I have written about it previously (October 30, 2019)  so I won't go into detail about the plant, but the visual difference between then and now is dramatic. Here's what it looks like right now. I have several of them, and the others are ready to bloom any day now. When the plants get as large as this one (about 4 ft.) they tend to get very top heavy and the main stem will break. I think this one is about to break. Fortunately, this plant produces lots of seeds which sprout up all over my back yard.

The third yellow flower is the most exciting for me - Berberis nevinii (Nevin's barberry). I've had this plant for a few years but it has never bloomed before (as far as I can recall). It's a rare plant (CNPS list 1B.1) and I have never seen it in the wild. Los Angeles County is it's main turf but it is also found in a few spots in San Diego county. The leaves are extremely spiny, so I planted it in a sport where no one ever goes. That makes it a little harder to see, but still I'm very pleased to have it blooming now.

Mammillaria Update

In my last post, a week ago, I commented on my Mammillaria dioica which has been blooming like crazy. Here's a photo from today showing the current status. Still going strong. It will be interesting to see how much longer the flowers last if we get no more rain.

The Start of a New Year

I've been away from home for about 2 months, so no blogging since late November. Now that I'm back at home, there is a lot to catch up with. I'll start with my Mammillaria dioica.

If it seems that I am obsessed with this plant, you're right. I am. The thing that amazes me about this particular one in my yard is how often it has been flowering. In my post of November 16, 2019, I commented on this. Here's the chronology thus far:

• Flowers observed on Sept. 22
• Watered by me in late September
• Flowering observed on Oct. 16
• Fruit observed on Nov. 8
• Rain Nov. 20 and 27
• Jan. 18 abundant flowers and numerous fruits observed (photos below)
• This makes 3 flowering events in 5 months

I find this rather amazing. Admittedly, I "forced"one of those blooms by watering it, but it could have easily rained at that time to produce the same result. 

Since I was away for 2 months, I did not observe the onset of the latest bloom or the progression of fruiting. I plan to watch the plant daily for the next several months to see how long these flowers last and how many fruit are produced.

The second plant I am excited about is a Dudleya candida. I bought a couple of these several years ago from Grigsby's nursery in Vista, and they are doing great in my garden (see Sept. 29, 2019). They are native to the Coronados Islands off the coast of Tijuana, so the marine influence in Encinitas is just right for them. Both of these plants have produced pups or seedlings (I'm not sure which) that I have discussed in earlier posts. One of those pups is now putting up an inflorescence.

This is a great indication of how well the plants are doing, and I'm looking forward to more pups in the years ahead.

More Germination of Annuals

We had some welcome rain on November 20. I had been waiting for this, and I had quite a few annual seeds to spread around, including Lupinus succulentus, Layia platyglossa, Collinsia heterophylla, and several others. In addition, there were lots of seeds in the soil from annuals I have grown the past few years. As I write this, rain is coming down again, giving us hope for a flowery spring.

I posted previously about germination resulting from my watering of some areas, but after last week's rain they are coming up everywhere. I'm not real good at identifying seedlings, but I'm working on it. This first one I've decided is Clarkia unguiculata.

I'm guessing these are cotyledons because they do not resemble the adult leaves. In the area that I watered before, the plants have grown enough to tell what they are (below) . Also, they are growing so densely that I'm going to have to thin them. This plant gets pretty large for an annual.

The next one is miner's lettuce, Claytonia perfoliata. I have learned to recognize this one at its very early stages because I've had it for more than 5 years.

The next two are mysteries to me. The seedlings in the first photo could be from the seeds I recently bought or they could be Sidalcea malviflora that I grew here last year.

The next one is the bigger mystery. The cotyledons look like a Fabaceae, but I don't recall buying any Fab seeds. The other possibility is Asclepias eriocarpa which I collected from the Mojave desert a couple of years ago. I just don't know if this is what Asclepias seedlings look like. It will be fun to see what they turn into.

Lastly, an Isocoma menziesii decided to bloom this week. I have several of these and all the rest are going dormant, but this one isn't ready to go to sleep yet.