The San Joaquin Valley, California: A Pretty Good Place

Some of us have an insatiable craving to understand the land around us. Sometimes, amazing books come along to help in this task. One such is Robert Edminster’s Streams of the San Joaquin. Written about California’s “El Valle De Los Tulares,” the San Joaquin Valley, this self-published gem reflects a lifetime of scholarly, on the ground observation of his home place, a part of California not often appreciated. Almost every point he makes is accompanied by an illuminating color photo.

There’s understated poetry in his story about his uncle’s dislike of the family farm, saying to his father, “Jack, Jack, why did you move to this godforsaken country?” I wondered about this as a boy because, not knowing anything else, I thought it was a pretty good place….Now, after more than 50 years of research…, I still think of the wet marshes and dry alkaline plains of the San Joaquin as “a pretty good place.”

If only there had been a Robert Edminster for every part of California.

California's Fading Wildflowers

An intriguing new book in the field by Richard A. Minnich, is called California's Fading Wildflowers; Lost Legacy and Biological Invasions, hardback . Literally crammed with information, this heady book condenses a vast amount of firsthand information about southern California's wildflower fields of the past and present. Minnich promotes the viewpoint that wildflowers were even more prevalent than was previously thought. It's fascinating to read the many newspaper accounts of impressive bloom times. He makes it clear that we are not the first to worship California's wildflowers - "Many Los Angeles suburbs celebrated annual flower festivals as late as the 1920s."

The Grain Fields

Since many wildflower seeds were used as food, (roasted and ground to make pinole), it makes sense that harbingers of a good seed harvest in the form of beautiful flowers produce an unconscious but palpable positive response."Permaculture" in California had a unique face because for many indigenous tribes, the seeds of ephemeral wildflower seeds were a crucial source of sustenance. A wildflower field was an unplowed, unmowed, unfertilized, untilled, unpesticided, unwatered, always returning grain field - part of the California definition of permaculture. Given our nitrogen addiction, and its dire consequences, it's thought-provoking to walk through this very lean, low humus, low nitrogen field with its intoxicating abundance of food-producing bloom.

Wildflower Rant

Wildflower Field in Central California, with Owl's Clover
As I roam the wildflower fields in the spring, I speculate that humans have an actual biochemical response to wildflower fields. I fancy that these beautiful flowers stimulate powerful bursts of serotonin, chemicals surging through the blood that allow the ignoring of painfully strong winds or baking heat or scratchy seed-laden socks, as we search and wander, continually amazed. The places that still sing this song of annual wildflowers are fewer all the time. They teach us what we need to know, so that wandering through wildflowers might happen at home too.
Last spring was a particularly inspiring wildflower season. In a favorite central California flower field, where the wind howled, I filmed the wind in the wildflowers. Click here to view the video. It was amazing how frequently the mix changed, to different proportions of species or different species altogether. The soil in this field was lean and sandy, even white in some places. Some "dry creeks" of pure sand ribboned through the field, and they too carried their full freight of wildflowers. Every year, as well, the mix of species changes, and the reasons for this variation are both obvious and obscure, an under-investigated arena. Speculating while wandering is an important part of the wildflower experience.

Quick Biology Lesson

Annuals are those species that go through an entire life cycle, from birth to flower to seed production to death, in one season. In California, that means that they germinate with the rains in the fall and winter, make good root growth through the rainy season, then begin bloom with the sun in the early spring to mid and late summer. Wildflowers go to seed through the summer,which waits for the fall rains to begin the cycle again. The gardener can go along with this ancient pattern, or choose "horticultural play," manipulating bloom time by manipulating the time of sowing.

A Dazzle of Clarkias

This time of year, the Larner Seeds Demonstration Garden is giddy with 7 different species of clarkias, thriving in numerous situations. COME VISIT!

Clarkias as much as any native California genus lend themselves to horticultural frivolity and play. Sturdy and tough, easy to grow, they are adaptable in containers,or to broadcasting in the ground.

In nature, different species of clarkias thread through golden grasses on dry hills throughout California, their vivid colors intoxicating, and their survival a reminder that the dry time in California is not naturally a drab one. Far from it.

We grow them in ceramic containers, in large wooden boxes, under trees, shaded by buildings, in full sun or partshade. They can be watered and coddled, or neglected and treated to tough love. Every part of California has its own suite of clarkia species, so use them as part of a restoration garden or as a horticultural celebration. We can't say enough about this genus, so we'll let the pictures speak for themselves.















Clarkia amoena, farewell to spring


















Clarkia rubicunda, Ruby chalice clarkia

Clarkia identification tips:

First note whether deeply lobed, like Clarkia concinna, or not, like Clarkia amoena. Then note presence of markings and their locations, such as at the base, (Clarkia rubicunda) or in the middle of the petal (Clarkia amoena). Note whether buds are upright (Clarkia amoena) or drooping (Clarkia rubicunda). Don't get confused by the term "godetia." - an old common and botanical name no longer in use.


















Clarkia unguiculata, mountain garland














Clarkia amoena, farewell to spring

The Most Beautiful Oak Tree in California

Maybe it would help our local oaks, struggling against SOD, if we had a contest to declare which, among the many beauties, is the most beautiful oak in the world (of California). In this way, they might sense that they are valued, thought of, praised, admired, and the object of our constant gratitude, that, as we do for family, we long for their health and longevity.

The tan-oak, reviled for years as a “junk tree” disliked by the timber industry, is now largely extinct in Marin County and some of Sonoma. To the Pomo, it was known as “the beautiful tree” and valued for its acorns, favored above all other kinds. Let’s stop the disaffection.

I would like to enter our jay-planted oak, now about 15 years old. Inconsistent with my constant iteration to my customers, clients, and friends to keep forest trees away from homes, it is much too near our rental cottage, called The Quail House, where it hospitably allows roosting quail to spend the night. The way it frames the hip roof is friendly and beautiful, though sadly, not something that can go on forever.

From inside the Quail house, it displays silvered limbs and trunk and rich green leaves at every window of the northwest facing wall (there are three). It absorbs the northwest winds, sucks them up with its naturally rounded form and dense crispy foliage. Also, the redwood siding on that shaded, protected side of the house displays rich color still, while the other sides of the house, which is always cool, have been bleached by the sun.


I submit that this tree has the most graceful form, the healthiest foliage, and the strongest, cleanest claim to vigor and the life force of any I know. Every spring, numerous seedlings, its offspring, appear, and I have selected one to someday take the place of its parent, situated in a more advantageous distance from the Quail House.

Please submit pictures of YOUR oak tree . The winner will receive one 4” pot of peppermint candy flower (Claytonia sibirica), one 4” pot of Pt Reyes checkerbloom (Sidalcea calycosa rhizomata), and one 4” pot of meadow rue (Thalictrum polycarpum). We have found that all these species do well under oaks, requiring no summer water and blooming freely

These must be “home yard” oaks, that live with people. Contest ends May 15, 2010