Sigal was the guide on wild flower hike in Henry Coe State Park. It turned out to be a family hike, grandparents, parents and grandchildren. We ventured down the narrow trail slowly searching for new flowers. We found a lot of flowers, many of them were new for us.
Here are some of the beautiful flowers we saw on the trail. Amos captured most of the flowers with his camera. Sometime I also could not resist and took turns with him.
 | The woody shrub, Blue Witch , is also known as Blue Nightshade I found some information about the flower in the following site: http://www.almaden.ibm.com/almaden/environs/wildflowers/index.html “The Blue Witch blooms all spring and summer. It has grayish-green leaves and makes green berries about the size of a hazelnut. The berries develop in May and June. Yes, this shrub is related to Deadly Nightshade. All parts of the plant contain the deadly alkaloid Solanine. Surprisingly, it is also a close relative of the tomato and potato. The cultivated "potato bush" looks a lot like it, but the petals of the potato bush are darker and don't have the little yellow or white spots on each petal. The wild tomatillo is also in the Nightshade family. Apparently, it took two hundred years for Europeans to get up the courage to eat tomatoes. Can you blame them when a few berries of the Deadly Nightshade can kill?" - |
 | The Gilia a delicate flower- bears for a long time a succession of blossoms either blue, white, lavender, or rose-colored. In the Henry Coe Park, we saw the Blue Gilia, later when we hiked in Point Lobos we saw the rose Gilia. |
 | California Sun Flower – The beautiful book “The Secrets of Wild Flowers” by Jack Sanders devote a chapter for the Sunflowers. The subtitle summarizes the flower’s properties and qualities: “Sunflowers feed and entertain humans and birds and inspire artists.” Everyone who loves flower will enjoy the words about the beauty and the treasures of the Sunflowers family. Vincent Van Gogh painted series of "the Sunflower". Some experts say that the sun flowers painting are his most beloved.Wikipedia has a dedicated page for the "Sunflowers" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunflowers_(series_of_paintings) |
 | The Chinese houses flower gets its name from layers of flowers which resemble a small collection of towers of decreasing diameter that looks like a pagoda. The scientific name is Collinsia bartsiifolia ssp. davidsonii - Davidson's Blue Eyed Mary. The shining white and light purple colors of the flower and its shape is very special and has some calmness about it. |
 | The Dense Flowered Lupine – Lupine is a wild flower. In the photo, one sees a branch with flowers and a branch with the pods. The Lupine is part of the Pea family. There are many species of Lupine; many of them can be viewed in the site: http://www.calflora.org/ The source of “lupine” word is the Latin word “Lupinus” meaning “wolf”. In the ancient, world, people believed that the Lupine flower was like a wolf, robbing the soil of its nutrient material and destroy it. Today we know that the Pea family plants add nitrogen to the soil. Old Greek tale, tells a story about Zeno of Citium of Crete (262 B.C), the famous founder of the Stoic School: Zeno, after drinking enough wine, compared himself to Lupine – Lupine loses its bitterness taste when soaked in water. Another Greek story tells us that visitors to the Oracle of the dead, on the back of the river Acheron, Epiros, were fed with Lupine peas, which prepared them to communicate with the dead. There are hundreds of species of Lupine. The Lupine produces flat seed-filled pods. Many species of Lupine are poisonous to livestock. If the pods are eaten in large quantities, they can cause poisoning. A reference to these two stories I found in the book “Florida Ethnobotany” by Daniel F. Austin. If you have reference to the source of the stories, let me know. A very interesting and fascinating article about the lupine appears in the following page: http://www.oldandsold.com/articles19/flowers-16.shtml One paragraph is about the advantage gained in the pea-shaped blossom and anther paragraph is about sleeping habits of the lupine. A Scientific article In the American Journal of Botany 64(8); 1032-1041. 1977, is about “Sun tracking and Related Leaf Movements in a Desert Lupine (Lupine Arizonicus) http://www.jstor.org/pss/2442259 Lupine became popular in the garden when George Russell hybridized them. He lived in Yorkshire England, as a railroad guard. You can read about his passion for Lupines and see some photos of his sensational flowers in the following site: http://www.godsowncounty.co.uk/03/yorkshire-folk/the-lupin-man-of-york-george-russell/ It is said, “Everybody loves Lupine”. In the coming year I will devote few square yards for Russell Lupine. I will try to start them from seeds. |
| Derived Microseris Flower – Microseris Douglasii – The flower is an annual herb native to California. |
 | Douglas Violet - Commandant Violet Blanche Douglas-Pennant (31 January 1869 – 12 October 1945) was a British philanthropist and supporter of local government who served as the first commandant of the Women's Royal Air Force (WRAF) until her dismissal in August 1918. These lines are part of an entry about Douglas Violet in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violet_Douglas-Pennant |
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