1. Wisteria sinensis

My week began with a very special botanical field trip to Sierra Madre, a hamlet near Pasadena that each year celebrates its hometown hero on the second Sunday of March.

That hero is a 116-year-old plant. Isn’t that cool?

Invited by Paula Panich, who enticed me with promises that I would see “one of the seven horticultural wonders of the world” (seriously, who could resist that offer!?), I drove 60 miles east to Sierra Madre and joined Paula’s entourage.

The Sierra Madre Wistaria Festival, a full-blown, main-street celebration, was under way to celebrate what the Guinness Book of World Records has named the world’s largest blooming plant – a Chinese wisteria (Wisteria sinensis).

Said wisteria, which the locals more accurately call Wistaria*, was planted in 1894 by Alice Brugman. She rode by horse and buggy to the R.H. Wilson Pioneer Nursery in nearby Monrovia to purchase the vine in a one gallon pot, spending 75-cents.

It now covers nearly one acre, weighs over 250 tons, and produces more than 1.5 million blossoms during a glorious, five-week run each spring. The festival occurs for one day only, when the property’s owners (aka the “flower stewards”) open up their gardens for thousands of visitors.

We were in attendance a little early in the vine’s bloom cycle, as you can see. But still, it was a sight to behold!

 The vine covers two private residential gardens and is supported by a sturdy matrix of metal arbors. We walked underneath the canopy formed by lightly-scented, pale purple clusters that looked gorgeous against the intense-blue sky.

A festive day indeed! 

As pretty as Victorian wallpaper, the vines and blossoms trace the sky

*Wisteria or Wistaria?

According to a brochure distributed at the festival, experts at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden have always used the correct spelling with “a” rather than “e.”

“The plant was named to honor Caspar Wistar (1761-1818), an American physician and University of Pennsylvania teacher. Among his accomplishments, he wrote the first text book on anatomy. When the name of the genus Wisteria was recorded, it was incorrectly spelled. So, one could say that all along, Sierra Madre has correctly spelled Wistaria.”

 Now you know.

2. Eschscholtzia californica 

This being perhaps my last spring as a full-time resident of Southern California, I was eager to squeeze in a visit to the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve. My goal was to see the valley’s meadows and rolling hills awash in vibrant orange – a celebration of the California Poppy, the State Flower since 1903.

While poppies grow in many areas, along the edges of highways and in surprising pockets both urban and rural, the only remaining large fields are in the western Antelope Valley. This area is part of northern Los Angeles Co., about 90 minutes northeast of my home in Thousand Oaks.

My parents were en route to visit this weekend (from the Phoenix area) and so I convinced them to take the detour north off of Hwy. 14 to meet me for a Friday morning Poppy Adventure.

We arrived at the 1,800-acre reserve located about 15 miles west of the town of Lancaster. As with my wisteria visit, we were definitely too early for the peak poppy bloom.

Despite plenty of spring precipitation, the temperatures here had not warmed up enough to prompt massive blooms. There were beautiful patches of orange poppies, intermixed with other lovely wildflowers – including blue lupines. We took joy in what we saw and promised ourselves to return in the future.

I wish I could go back in two week’s time – that’s when the display will be the showiest!

3. Yucca brevifolia 

On our way out of the Antelope Valley, we discovered an obscure state park called the Ripley Desert Woodland. This 560-acre “virgin forest” is populated with Joshua Trees (Yucca brevifolia) and California junipers (Juniperus californica). According to the brochure we picked up:

“This is how the western part of the Mojave Desert must have appeared to early explorers as they came through the area” in the late 18^th and early 19^th century. . . .”

The park is named for Arthur Ripley, a farmer who willed the acreage to California when he died in 1988. He farmed a large amount of land in Antelope Valley, but he also was concerned enough about the Joshua/juniper woodlands to preserve a pristine area.

I was quite moved by this wild place. Walking through this desert woodland was pretty awe-inspiring. To find it, drive on Lancaster Road, heading west, about 5 miles beyond the Poppy Reserve.

 

Sometimes, if you’re open to the experience, you meet the most amazing people in the unlikeliest of places. Earlier this month, artist Linda Ann Vorobik was my surprise encounter.

This is Part 2 of my Lopez Island story. We went camping on July 4th weekend on a lovely little island called Lopez, in the San Juan Islands of Washington State.

My friend Jennifer Cargal, who organized the camping trip, mentioned that the Farmer’s Market on Lopez was a real treat. Imagine, getting to poke around booths, sample jams and nuts, talk with artisans – all while ostensibly on a camping trip (I must add that Jennifer made the most of our visit to Lopez because we also managed to have a “mom-only” tasting at the Lopez Winery, while her husband kept an eye on all four boys – what a champ).

Turns out that the Lopez Farmer’s Market was a 2-day affair over the holiday weekend, so we went Friday and Saturday. Amid the vendors of artwork, yarn spun and died from local sheep and alpaca, jewelry, pottery and photography, I spied Linda’s display of botanical artwork.

Linda is an incredibly gifted scientist and illustrator whose work has documented highly regarded field guides and botanical reference manuals. She considers all three west coast states “home,” but has returned to her family property on Lopez to live and draw and work on myriad research projects. As we spoke, I realized how broad and deep are her talents. She pretty much has the entire west coast flora population covered in her knowledge.

With a PhD from the University of Oregon, Linda conducts field research and teaches in the Siskiyou Mountains of southwestern Oregon. She also visits Berkeley on a regular basis, where she is a research associate at the University Herbarium at UC-Berkeley.

Linda is the principal illustrator of The Jepson Manual: Higher Plants of California (an expanded, updated version of which will be issued next year) and The Flora of Santa Cruz Island. She has contributed many illustrations to scientific, botanical and horticultural publications.

We started talking about Santa Cruz Island, which is the tiny, remote island I visited in California’s Channel Islands this past May with my friend Paula Panich. Linda’s illustrations of native California species that grow on Santa Cruz are just spectacular. I think we’d have to go earlier in springtime to see some of them growing in situ. But the next best thing are her watercolors. I had to purchase a set of note cards to send Paula as a reminder of the day there.

The set included Dicentra formosa (Western bleeding heart); Dicentra spectabilis (Garden bleeding heart); Calochortus catalinae (Catalina Island mariposa lily); and Calochortus splendens (Lilac mariposa lily). Check out Linda’s web site to see the incredible detail of each plant and its parts. All four of these flowers are available as cards, prints – and even a few of the original paintings are available for purchase at what seems like a pretty affordable price for original botanical art.

Okay, so the Channel Island note cards were in my basket. What next ? Oh, I couldn’t resist two cards for my new friend Marie Lincoln, owner of the Chocolate Flower Farm on Whidbey Island. Having just met Marie a few days earlier, I was thinking about her when I saw two beautiful cards with patterned fritillaria, which Linda rendered in sultry, luscious “chocolatey” hues ranging from soft green to deepest plum. Fritillaria affinis (Chocolate lily) appears in several coastal Pacific Northwest locations. As Linda writes on her web site: “If you are lucky enough to encounter them, take a peek into their enchanting nodding bells to see six bright yellow stamens with a background of green and brown checker-painted petal color.”

Finally, all this gift-giving for my garden friends made me yearn for something of Linda’s to bring home to my Southern California walls. The perfect print was there in her little open-air gallery. It symbolized the happiness I experienced on Lopez, as I enjoyed nature, good companionship, the laughter and boisterous activities of children, eating food around the fire, and pure summer.

Linda’s print: “Spring Wildflowers of Lopez Island,” features several of her botanical watercolors together: Zygadenus venenosus (Death camas – prettier than its name suggests); Dodecatheon pulchellum (Shooting star), Camassia leichtlinii (Camas) and the two gorgeous chocolate lilies. Just looking at this print today makes me smile.

If you have any inclination to learn more about botanical art, you’ll be pleased to know that Linda teaches workshops all around the west, including classes scheduled for the Berkeley area this September. Read about them here.

It’s these small souvenirs that become touchstones for so many of our memories. That’s why I brought home a pocketful of smooth pebbles, gathered from the shore of Lopez Island. They are piled on my nightstand where I can be sure to see them – at least twice a day.