Category: Plants
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A couple old Phyla nodiflora specimens
Phyla nodiflora is one of the most aggressive plants I’ve encountered, I think quintupling in size in the few months we’ve had it. Jepson raises some questions about whether it’s actually native to California: “Note: Questionably native; variation in leaf margin, leaf hairiness may reflect multiple introductions from elsewhere, including South America.” The presenter in…
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Four flowers visited by a hummingbird
While I was sitting in our yard just a little while ago, a green hummingbird visited four plants in bloom in our yard. Earlier I had seen a hummingbird — the same bird? — making loops, flying nearly straight up into the air, higher than a nearby three story building, then diving down, making a…
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Muwekma Ohlone Garden at Monta Loma Elementary
When I first heard about the Castro Mound in the Monta Loma neighborhood and its subsequent destruction, I was further saddened to learn that there’s no marker acknowledging it. Now there is a memorial though, in the form of a garden, the new Living Classroom Muwekma Ohlone Garden at Monta Loma Elementary. I was happy…
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Burr medic tastes starchy
A little over a week ago, inspired by an interesting talk on weeds at the Garden Club of Los Altos, I kept some of the burr medic (Medicago polymorpha) I pulled from a school garden and brought it home to cook. Unlike small melilot (Melilotus indicus), which I also tried recently, burr medic grows low…
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Small melilot flowers taste like snap peas
Helping with weeding a Living Classroom garden today, we pulled up a lot of what Seek tells me is small melilot: I nabbed a few of the plants we pulled to give eating it a try: One source said the flowers are edible so I decided to start with them: I tried a few of…
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Putting Foothill College’s “Native Hill” on the map
I walked to Foothill College earlier today seeking the “Native Hill” described on this California Native Plant Society page (Archive). (I actually first heard about there being a native plant garden at Foothill College via a reference in this presentation from a Girl Scout describing her planned work at the Los Altos Woodland Library garden.)…
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Weeding at the school
I got to do some weeding at the school’s Living Classroom garden Saturday morning, only getting rained on a little. I’d noticed some of the weeds going to seed and so hoped to avoid some of the spread. I think I pulled out around 12 species of plants, working over around 2.5 hours. In the…
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Poppies in Los Altos
I’m intrigued by references to poppies in early Los Altos. For example, in a 1909 brochure from Paul Shoup, et al, marketing the area, there’s a photo of poppies with the caption: “Los Altos is famed for its fields of poppies.” And in Joe Salameda’s book “Memories of Los Altos“, J. Gilbert Smith is quoted…
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Another walk, another weed
I swung by the library to return some books, then picked up a few more: The game design book was waiting there for me. I searched for “startup” in the catalog on a whim, which led me to the others. (Per this Reddit thread, Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design is also worth a look. The…
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Another weed and buttercup blooming
Yesterday I learned the name for another weed, again thanks to Seek: One interesting thing about petty spurge: it’s being used as a cancer treatment: “The sap from Euphorbia peplus is effective against human nonmelanoma skin cancers” (2011). I haven’t been able to find out yet why it’s called “petty”. This particular specimen I saw…