Revfad Blog

Walking along North San Antonio to El Camino Real

—

by

David Faden
in

I had a nice walk this morning, my first time walking from our new place to El Camino Real. Strava tells me the roundtrip was around 4.6 miles, the furthest I’ve gotten to walk for a while. (But I’ll hope to go much further soon.)

One treat was seeing rooreh (miner’s lettuce, Claytonia perfoliata) in bloom.

Rooreh in bloom; circular leaves with white five petaled flowers in the center.

I’ve had bad luck getting it to grow in our garden, showing how much I have to learn. (Elsewhere, as you can see, it grows like a weed.) But I’ll keep on trying because I hope to make rooreh salad sometime soon.

I also enjoyed using the Seek app (Android; iOS) to find the names of many weeds I’d forgotten or never knew. (If you see that Seek got any of these wrong, I’d love to be corrected.)

Round-leaved Crane's bill; no flowers, green leaves with multiple notches or lobes, reminiscent of geranium.
Round-leaved crane’s bill (Geranium rotundifolium), seemingly originally from Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa.
Cape islands ivy; big shiny green leaves, heart-shaped with smooth edges.
Canary Islands ivy (Hedera canariensis), originally from the Canary Islands, like the name suggests. Also known as Algerian ivy. Said to have high negative impact on CA ecosystems by Cal IPC. Poisonous.
Clover leaves with yellow flowers.
Bur clover (Medicago polymorpha), originally from the Mediterranean. Edible?
Musk stork's bill. Light purple flowers with five petals and pinnately compound leaves, each leaflet with rough edges
Musk stork’s bill (Erodium moschatum), originally from Eurasia and northern Africa, also known as white stem filaree. Edible?
shepherd's purse, white flowers atop stems with triangle shaped seeds.
Shepherd’s purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris), originally from Eastern Europe and Anatolia. Wikipedia notes: “It is cultivated as a commercial food crop in Asia.” (Sorry for the fuzzy photo.)
Common sow thistle, dandelion like flower with multiple deeply toothed leaves along stem.
Common sowthistle (Sonchus oleraceus), native to Europe and Western Asia. Wikipedia says: “Leaves are eaten as salad greens or cooked like spinach.”
Common chickweed (Stellaria media), native to Eurasia. Wikipedia says that it’s “edible and nutritious, and is used as a leaf vegetable, often raw in salads.” (Too bad that it’s probably not safe to harvest anything from along San Antonio.)
Common groundsel. Multiple yellow flowers, deeply lobed leaves.
Common groundsel (Senecio vulgaris), native to the Palearctic. Poisonous.
Purple flower atop a fuzzy stem protected by sharp spines and forked leaves with spines. Leaves have prominent light colored river like lines running across them.
Italian thistle (Carduus pycnocephalus), native to northern Africa, Europe, and Asia. Cal IPC says that it has moderate negative impact.

Finally, there was one other plant that I don’t believe I’ve noticed before:

White ramping fumitory. Tubular white flowers with purple tips, Columbine-like leaves
White ramping fumitory (Fumaria capreolata), native to northern Africa, Europe, and Asia.

Seeing these weeds from across the world made me think of “American Gods”, which I’m enjoying reading now. They were brought here, carried by humans, by accident or for reasons forgotten, but now have a life of their own. Unlike the gods though, they don’t require any worship to flourish.

I release all images in this post as Creative Commons Public Domain.

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *