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 November 2022.

Spring 2022

The wildflower show arrived a little earlier this year, and I’m blaming it on that atmospheric river that unexpectedly crashed the party in October and also a December drenching of twenty-three wet days. December’s soaking was followed by a disappointingly dry January and February but the dye was cast as the wildflowers started popping up in early February.

The spectacle began with Franciscan wallflower (Erysimum franciscanum) occupying nearly every square inch of grasslands near the summit. Hundreds of creamy-yellow beauties dared me not to pounce to the ground and inhale their dreamy fragrance, a practice I most definitely enjoy. It’s just not spring until I do. Hot on the heels of the wallflower were footsteps-of-spring (Sanicula arctopoides), San Francisco campion (Silene verecunda), alkali parsnip (Lomatium caruifolium) and lace parsnip (L. dasycarpum), and an early showing of star lily (Toxicoscordion fremontii), or as us old-timers love to call it, zigadene, named for its former genus Zigadenus (darn taxonomists have ruined many cool names).

In early March, David Nelson and I set out for Army Road, which is a PG&E access road for the East Powerline on a ridge of Buckeye Canyon. Earlier that week, a friend of ours had taken a photo of a group of white-petaled iris flowers that iNaturalist had identified as Fernald’s iris (Iris fernaldii). This would have been a new plant for San Bruno Mountain if the ID held up. In situations like this, my first inclination is to check with Calflora to see if there are any San Mateo County observations. And there were, however they were all within a few miles of La Honda in the Santa Cruz Mountains. They are on granite-based soils and San Bruno Mountain is composed of greywacke sandstone, so my suspicions were raised. My second inclination is to go to the E-Jepson website and print the key for the plant. We easily found the population and I immediately consulted the key and discovered that the leaves of our mystery iris plants were two times the width of the leaves in the key. Fernald’s iris leaves are 6—8 mm wide at the base and our plants were closer to 15 mm wide, exactly the width of coast iris (Iris longipetala), which is common to Buckeye Canyon. Apparently, the artificial intelligence feature of iNaturalist had seen a white iris and made the incorrect call. Based on everything I saw and the keys, I pronounced the plants to be a white-morph form of coast iris. We plan on returning next year to see what color the flowers are, white or the usual light purple.

We headed up the west side of the ridge and encountered quite a wildflower show. This is where I discovered that star lilies were strewn all over the place, hundreds of them! Adding to the show were sprinklings of golden violets or Johnny jump-ups (Viola pedunculata), silver lupine (Lupinus albifrons), suncups (Taraxia ovata), poppies (Eschscholzia californica), and purple needle grass (Stipa pulchra). We also saw a lot more coast iris plants, which put an exclamation point to our previous identification. We could see the trail in Buckeye Canyon through the trees below us and followed the ridge to a footpath and headed down. Off we went up the canyon until we reached the creek and we noticed that the western chain ferns (Woodwardia fimbriata) and a pink-flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum var. glutinosum) were missing. Was it possible that they died for lack of water in the super-dry rain year of 2019-2020 when we received a measly 9.01 inches of rainfall?

We went up the bank past the maidenhair ferns (Adiantum jordanii) and the blooming buckeye trees (Aesculus californica) and had lunch at the shellmound. Sitting there eating and looking at the fragments of oyster and clam shells littering the ground, staring at Callippe Hill in the distance, I wondered what a few Ohlone people must have thought while eating their day’s catch of shellfish in that very same spot 300 years ago.

The Raven versus the Red-tail:

While walking down the short road from the day camp to the Old Guadalupe Trail, I heard a Common Raven making a lot of racket in a eucalyptus tree at the bottom of the hill. As I got closer, I saw a Red-tailed Hawk perched on a branch and a few feet away was the raven, most likely part of a pair that hangs out at the day camp and probably nests nearby. I could understand why the raven was upset.

Between the two birds was an erect broken branch about five inches tall and a half-inch wide. The raven began pecking at it, over and over again, squawking to high heaven as if to impress upon the hawk that this is what was in store for it if it didn’t fly away—right now!! Well, not only did the hawk not fly away, it lunged at the raven, causing the raven to retreat a foot or two. The raven never ceased squawking at the hawk until the hawk flew up to another branch and looked down at the raven.

I was thinking “so what are you going to do now, Mr. Raven?” What does this raven do when squawking isn’t working? This raven flies 50 feet to another smaller eucalyptus tree and shuts up, and I make a 180 degree turn and walk toward home. About thirty seconds later I hear the raven squawking again and I wish the raven the best of luck with the hawk and I chuckle. What a sweet morning it has been. This mountain is too cool for school.

See you on the Mountain….