Monterey County Magazine - Spring/Summer 2005
Flowers of Summer; in the wild and in the garden
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Spring breaks into early summer as fog bursts through the gap in a canyon. The last rains fade from the sky and the rural hills are clothed with flowers as are the gardens of Monterey County. On steep banks along Carmel Valley Road bush lupines decorate their silver shrubs with candles of blue and yellow beside masses of pink clarkias and orange mimulus. Farther south the driver can simply roll down his car window to breathe the rich honey scent of purple owls clover, low arroyo lupines, and golden fire poppies where they splay the fields like spilt watercolors in Jolon. In Big Sur, Indian Paintbrush (Castelleja) and yellow Lizard Tail decorate coastal rocks and terraces. Paintbrushes live in companionship with their hosts, coastal sagebrush, with whose roots they are intertwined for sustenance. Exotic protea, succulents and sages can be seen at Loma Vista and the famous Nepenthe. In the rooftop herb garden perched above Post Ranch Inn's Sierra Mar restaurant, oreganos and thymes are in bloom among fragrant foliage harvested to use in the dishes offered inside.
As you travel around the county become a connoisseur of grasses. Many wildflowers are opportunists and will only grow well in newly disturbed soils or thin grass where light and air can reach their dormant seeds as the first fall rains come. If the grass grows too thickly or is not kept down by the grazing of cattle or deer, the wildflowers will soon be overwhelmed. In other places, like under the canopy of a live oak, the grass is retarded somewhat by the thick mantle of fallen leaves. Here the cattle come to lie each summer and scuff up the cover enough to give blue and white Fiesta Flowers (Pholistoma) a place to germinate. Fiesta Flowers thrive in the slightly moister shadow of the oak and rarely venture away from its shelter. This plant has wide rounded flowers and many tiny soft prickles that line each stem. When picked the stems adhere readily to our clothes like they must have to the lacy dresses of Spanish and Mexican ladies who adorned their bodices with this natural corsage in colonial times.
Blue Dicks (Dichlostema) with their clusters of blue onion-like flowers atop wiry stems, wave in the breeze accompanied by yellow Tritelia, which often form small colonies of 20 to 30 specimens. Deep gold California poppies cluster in the barest spots, while a little farther down slope, lupines spill out like purple waves in slightly thicker stands of grass. In good years, Larkspurs fill the fields as thickly as an invading army of purple flower spikes, in other years you will be lucky to find a solitary specimen in the same meadow. The illusive Nightshade (Solanum xantii) huddles under other shrubs in high hot chaparral with blue petunia-like flowers held well into July or August.
The beginning of summer is best experienced on the Coast Ridge Trail; here the sudden inland rush of the ocean fog is felt more than seen. The trail rides the top of the Santa Lucia's in a series of soft bucks and rolls, to reveal a cloth of gold under massive ancient trees. As the sun is dropping into the sea a cold breeze sweeps the meadow grass towards you and the trees sigh. The fog tendrils grab at the last sunlight escaping over the ridge top but they miss; the sun disappears and the fog retreats below. The grass heads turn back towards the sea and the first star shows overhead.
In the golden summer the grasses become the show. Tall wild oats may have spilt their seeds but their heads become tiny flakes of beaten gold glowing in the evening sun. Purple Needle Grass seeds are decorated with a purple awn, a long wire like end that helps it grab onto the coat of a passing rabbit or coyote. When the coyote shakes his coat free of the riders the seeds will have found a new home, miles from the parent. The hiker is often the best connoisseur of grass. He appreciates a short stature expanse of native bunch grasses; they have few stickers to lodge in his socks. He avoids a mass of foxtail grass high enough to brush his knees leaving him with many unwanted companions.
Just as the display is winding down in the wild, it is ramping up in the garden. The months of June and July are announced with the flowering of bougainvilleas from every sunny wall in Carmel and Monterey. These Brazilian natives can be tall woody vines, arching shrubs or rippling groundcovers. Their only requirement is plenty of sun and a frost-free space to grow. As the days reach their longest the bougainvillea celebrates with trusses of pink, red, orange or purple flowers. The display will linger well into fall provided they are kept on a lean diet without either too much water or nitrogen. The only mistake made with this plant is the urge to contain its rather untidy arching shape but the hedge shears keep it from blooming.
In my own garden I cluster the vibrant red Crocosmia 'Lucifer' among asters, African daisies and the dark leaved Cotinus 'Purple Robe'. Crocosmia are native to damp meadows far away in the Drakensburg Mountains of South Africa. There they bloom as the soil begins to dry out in summer, sending out tiered trusses of flowers for the hummingbirds to duel over. Crocosmia also flower in orange and yellow, are planted in spring as bulbs that quickly send up a distinctive fan of ribbed sword leaves. After the flowers fade in August or September the trusses can be very ornamental as the cinnamon seedpod break open. In frosty areas, the bulbs need to be lifted in fall and packed away in a cool dry place.
In the wild it will not rain again for months and up on the hillsides the sages begin to loose their leaves, the essential oils are concentrated in the remaining foliage. There is powerful herbal scent in the air as the sun heats the chaparral. There is also strong smell of redwood and bay in the canyon as spent leaves and needles begin to carpet the ground in a new layer of duff. The whole wild land is now about scent not color. There is the slightly resinous honey scent of ceanothus on a hot day, the damp smell of a ferny spot in the cliff base.
As you hike to your camp far out in the Ventana Wilderness or from your tent to the edge of Naciemento Lake, notice the smell of dry grass in the morning. I will do the same as I walk into my meadow high above the glittering Pacific in Big Sur to give the neighbor's horse his morning apple.
Dave Egbert, The Coastal Gardener
