Doug's Mountain Journal
A Chronicle of Natural History on San Bruno Mountain
Doug Allshouse has been writing his seasonal Mountain Journal for many years. It appears in the quarterly newsletters of the Yerba Buena Chapter of the California Native Plant Society (CNPS). We are very pleased to share his reflections on the natural history of the Mountain. Together with David Nelson, he is writing San Bruno Mountain: A Guide to the Flora and Fauna. The book will be published by Heyday Books in 2022.
Super blooms were the rule, not the exception as spring spilled into summer and some well-timed May showers helped extend the blooms and may encourage some late-summer botanical fireworks. I’m hoping pink everlasting (Pseudognaphalium ramosissimum) goes crazy in August. On June 30th we put a stellar 2018-19 rain season to bed. 29.68” fell with January, February and March combining for a bit over 19” and May threw in 2.35”, almost 10 times the second-best May (2015) in the last 6 years!!
Anyone familiar with our native California blackberry (Rubus ursinus) knows that, despite its smaller berry, the flavor is more luscious than the larger fat berry of the non-native Himalaya blackberry (R. armeniacus). It’s been my experience that the native has always been a shy bearer of fruit, at least in the cooler, wetter bog and saddle area. For some reason this season has brought forth profusely bearing canes of California blackberry—maybe that wet May? What a great time to get acquainted with this delicious and interesting plant.
California blackberry
California blackberry is a dewberry with biennial canes that are trailing, not erect or arching, that tip-layer to spread vegetatively by roots forming where the tip touches the ground. The cane is generally red with fine prickles up to 3 mm long. The prickles are not thorns, although the terms are often used interchangeably. Technically a thorn is a modified branch or stem and has a vascular supply. A prickle is comparable to a hair, only coarser from epidermal tissue and has no vascular bundle inside. The prickles of the California blackberry are very irritating, due to a chemical that makes you notice them, hours after they lodge in your skin. The leaf has 3 leaflets that are irregularly toothed. The inflorescence has 1-5 white flowers that are distinguished from other blackberries by their rather narrow petals. As is common with other Rubus species, the primal cane is vegetative the first year and reproductive the second year by producing floricanes. The sweet edible fruits, which require a constant source of moisture, are not usually prolific in the wild. One reason for this is that the canes are dioecious with male flowers and female flowers on separate canes and only the female cane bears fruit. Its genes were a key component in the development of the loganberry, youngberry, marionberry and boysenberry. As a secondary invader along with poison oak and coyote bush it can crowd out other plants and create impenetrable thickets.
American Robin (A. Gray ©2014)
Sensual entertainment in the form of cacophony rarely presents itself on quiet mornings but occasionally, it appears in spades. One memorable foggy morning inside the Crocker Gate I was greeted by a bunch of American Robins in distress. I immediately looked up to scan the branches of a eucalyptus tree searching for either an owl or hawk. After spotting the bird I waited for the head to move to identify it as a Red-tailed Hawk. I walked about 30 feet before turning around and raised my binoculars to see it and spotted a second hawk a few branches away. No wonder those robins were agitated! I turned and walked about another 30 yards and heard a pair of male Swainson’s Thrushes; one in the eucalyptus to my right and the other up the hill in some blackberries to my left singing in stereo. What a hoot I thought, and about 25 seconds later I heard the scream of a Red-shouldered Hawk up a Monterey cypress! Cacophony rarely gets any better than that.
Steller’s Jay (A. Gray ©2015)
Defending a nest is tough and daring work and perhaps no bird does it more courageously than a Robin. This became evident to me one morning while walking the Old Guadalupe Trail. A Steller’s Jay wandered a bit too close to a nest and was immediately engaged by the male. I watched as he chased the jay in an arc from my right to left through the branchlets and leaves of an acacia on the other side of the road. Four to five belly feathers suddenly appeared, floating in a breeze; a self-defense mechanism usually employed by the bird being chased, usually by a larger bird of prey. When the predator grabs the prey, the feathers are jettisoned leaving the predator with a foot full of feathers. They both reappeared in the same arc in the opposite direction and disappeared into the acacias on my side of the road. And lo and behold, there was a primary wing feather spinning perfectly vertically as it plunged toward earth. I had no idea whose feathers I saw (I presumed it was the jay’s) but it affirmed that the idea of wandering too close to a robin’s nest can extract quite a price.
Golden Hair-Lichen - Teloschistes flavicans
Lichens are extremely interesting organisms, and I use the plural not only to refer to the thousands of species but also to the multiple organisms that it takes to create a lichen. The body that is visible to our eyes is a fungus, which cannot produce its own food. It needs something to nourish it. A mushroom is the fruiting body of underground mycorrhizae that supply a vast network of tentacles to gather water and minerals to plant or tree roots in exchange for sugars. The fungus of a lichen is like the structure of a greenhouse and the algae or cyanobacteria are the plants that photosynthesize sugars from light. An amateur lichenologist recently discovered that a certain kind of yeast is the necessary glue to create a lichen. Teloschistes flavicans, Golden Hair-Lichen, is one of my favorites for its pure beauty. Many people confuse it with Usnea rubra, Red Old Man’s Beard. Teloschistes resembles an orange Brillo pad and can be found mid-branch, well below the tip. Red Old Man’s Beard is reddish-brown with longer, wispier tentacles that will stretch when it is moist.
Red Old Man’s Beard - Usnea rubra
Poison oak
Poison oak (PO) leaves are beginning to turn red which seems to signal the full swing of summer. This generally begins toward the end of June when the plant runs low on water. PO is a schizophrenic plant. Not only does it have urushiol, an irritating sap (Toxicodendron is Latin for poison tree), but it is wildly diverse in its form and leaves (diversilobum means differently lobed). Chlorophyll is the pigment that gives leaves their green color and enables them to perform photosynthesis. When the chlorophyll breaks down other pigments that are present take over. Anthocyanin gives leaves their red color, carotenoids their orange color, and xanthophylls their yellow color. Sometimes more than one pigment may be present in a leaf giving it a multicolor effect. After dropping its leaves, it just might put out new leaves in October or November during a warm spell especially after an autumn shower or two.... only to suddenly drop them again until breaking out for good in February or March. Of course, the birds love the berries, making poison oak the most widespread shrub-vine-tree in the West.
See you on the Mountain...