Saturday, June 2, 2007

Wildflowers on the trail

Last Sunday when my son and I were taking his dogs for a walk - yes the same day we encountered the killdeer - we went walking on the trail of a nearby County Park - Los Gatos Creek County Park to be exact. The following pix are a few of the wildflowers we came across. First, there were fields of the following flowers - these are statice. The plant itself looks different from the kind of statice that grows on the coastal side of the hill where they get more humidity and moisture from the daily morning & evening marine layer. But these flowers like drier climates, too. This particular specimen looks so much nicer and healthier than what I tried to grow in my own garden a few years ago.



I think these are called Tidy Tips. From all the wildflower books I looked at, the Tidy Tips in the books have more yellow. But I found these little guys very striking along the trail where we were walking.


And this is a Hollyhock - it must be "wild" because it isn't in a garden getting regular watering and TLC! This was also on the trail.
And here is a close-up of the flower itself. Isn't it pretty? I wonder if it still looks this good this weekend. This is the season of no-rain. Our rainy season ended back in April, and we probably won't see any rain again until November.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Looks like a lovely walk.

I checked the San Jose Falconcam, I didn't see any falcons. Are they all flying around now?

LostRoses said...

Tidy Tips looks just like a fried egg, is that cute or what? Nice walk, and a lot of great flowers. The "wild" hollyhock looks like my garden ones in dry years!

Mary said...

You know, Mary, I never paid much attention to wild flowers until I started blogging and carried a camera with me during walks. Aren't they amazingly hardy?

RuthieJ said...

Hi Mary,
I just read your other posts and found out you're new to blogging. Welcome!

I looked in my atlas because I thought San Jose was closer to LA, and found that it's close to San Fran. My brother lives near Roseville (Antelope) and works for UP. I think he sometimes ends up in San Jose.

Thanks for sharing your nature photos. It will be fun to see what you're observing and sharing in future posts.

Larry said...

Good to see you're in to plants and flowers in case I need identifications-and you like birds too-great!

 

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