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| From Native By Design |
On another beautiful day at the Nature Park, our efforts went to removing a lot of garbage (some rather interesting in nature) and finding and removing the above seedlings: castor bean (Ricinus communis)- enemy no. 1.
For the last few months, we focused our attention on the milk thistle, but there were few of these in evidence this time. Now the castor bean is sprouting. If you go to the park feel free to remove any of these that you find. Here's a picture of one still standing. Notice the large oval first leaves (cotyledons) and the palmate true leaf. It is often reddish in color.
Castor bean seedling
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| From Native By Design |
Be very careful to avoid poison oak. This is an important native plant that has good habitat value: it provides cover and food for many animals.
Beware - Poison oak
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| From Native By Design |
Poison oak
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| From Native By Design |
The park is doing well as the following pictures attest.
Park Entrance on Pasadena Ave. (Bush sunflower, black sage and poppies in bloom)
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| From Native By Design |
Baby blue eyes
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| From Native By Design |
Info sign on Pasadena Ave.
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| From Native By Design |
Mexican elderberry
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| From Native By Design |
Sugar bush
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| From Native By Design |
Native plant, everlasting, sprouting on its own
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| From Native By Design |
Deer grass, black willow and coyote bush
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| From Native By Design |
But not all is perfect. The following picture is taken of the main central part of the park. It was supposed to be a grassland but became overcome with weeds during the first winter and spring of its existence. The city then added mulch to smother the weeds. We need to direct our attention to this area. I am hoping to level the area this year in preparation for planting in the winter. Since birds need high, medium and low cover - and we already have nice medium and high vegetation - we should consider using low-growing scrub plants. Buckwheat, black sage, deer weed, monkey flower, bush sunflower are all good candidates that are native to the Arroyo Seco. A generous sprinkling of wildflower seeds would be just the thing!
Does anyone else have thoughts on this?
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| From Native By Design |
1 comment:
Hello Barbara !
I think you have the perfect solution for sowing wild/native flowers and plants in this area .. I am a huge fan of ornamental and native grasses .. I can well understand the need for ground cover in general in such a vast dry area .. it is wonderful you are so pro-active !
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