Spring is in the air here in Northern Cal! How can I tell? Allergies have returned.
But I can’t really get upset about it, because all sorts of other wonderful things happen. I get to encounter things like this on my hikes near my house:
I tried to look up this flower online to figure out its name, but I could not find it. If you know the name of this flower, I’d love to hear it. Clearly I need to buy a guidebook or something.
I did find the name of this lovely thing, though. It is the extremely prosaic stickseed.
I think it should be renamed the blue-eyed honey. But I’m not in charge of naming flowers. Here’s the blue-eyed honey’s much better-known sibling, the iris:
Pretty, but I feel like the iris is a bit overblown. I’m much more into the madrone tree. Here is one with particularly lithe branches:
Spring also means newly budded leaves, fresh and tender:
There are other things on the forest floor, too. Like this mushroom, almost alien-like:
But nothing beats this strange fruit I encountered:
Nothing says spring more than this: life, erupting.
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{ 3 comments }
i love the fotos, m lo! and i love spring too.
and like you, i get allergies. boo.
Your mystery flower is Zigaenus (most likely fremontii); it’s referred to as the common star lily.
The strange fruit in your last pic is a sprouting Buckeye seed. The photo of the newly budded leaves looks like a CA Buckeye tree. In a month or so, it’ll start to flower.
I hope this helps.
Sorry, I forgot the “d” in Zigadenus.
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