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New Beginnings

John Keats wrote that “the poetry of earth is never dead.” Perhaps had the great English Romantic poet strolled the Santa Monica Mountains on a winter’s day he would understand a local hiker’s desire to appropriate that line as a motto of sorts.

February is the famed month for love, and the Santa Monicas proffer a Valentine to all nature enthusiasts in the form of a bouquet of winter-blossoming shrubs and wildflowers. The timetable for blooms is a bit skewed this year with some native plants ratcheting up their showy performance months ahead of usual, though theirs is a sporadic rather than heavy outpouring of color. For now the old botanical mainstays of the season some cynics refer to as Southern California’s “false spring” are causing a stir along trail sides, including the following.

Milkmaids. “What a rapture we always feel over this first blossom of the year!” wrote Mary Elizabeth Parsons in her 1907 tome, “The Wild Flowers of California.” Her comments, while a bit quaintsounding, resonate today as Parsons was an accurate observer.

Hummingbird sage. “The leaves . . . have a rather rank, unpleasant odor, but the crimson flowers are not without a certain comeliness.”

Purple nightshade. “The clusters of violet flowers . . . often have the perfume of the wild rose.”

Lilac. “A more delightful way of performing one’s ablutions can hardly be imagined than at the brook side with so charming a soap as a handful of wild lilac blossoms rubbed vigorously into an excellent lather, with a pleasant fragrance.”

Toyon. “Nothing in all our flora yields a finer contrast of lavish scarlet [berries] against rich green.”

Chaparral currant. “. . . the fresh pink blossoms . . . seem like the very incarnation of the spirit of spring, producing a certain eblouissement.

Prickly phlox. “The texture of the rich rose-colored flowers is of the finest silk, with an exquisite sheen.”

On rugged rocky slopes exposed to sun and wind, shooting stars are proving that exquisite

beauty can flourish in a truly hardscrabble environment. With careful observation a treasury of them can usually be found dotting “Shooting Star Hill” at the junction of Triunfo Canyon Road and Lindero Canyon Road, Westlake Village, adjacent to Triunfo Creek Park. On wand-like stalks above a rosette of foliage appear clusters of backward-flaring petals that resemble an exotic blackbeaked bird or pink parachute.

North-facing slopes are typically cooler and shadier but have a very distinct enchantment, often bearing tier upon tier of coastal wood ferns and milkmaids. Milkmaids produce clusters of white flowers atop slender stems and truly stand out against a dense green carpet of bedstraw, miner’s lettuce, fiesta flower and hedge nettle, an herb in the mint family. The latter’s rumpled-textured leaves bear a light down and have a delightful lemony scent but Miss Parsons dismissed their spires of blooms as containing “homely little pink flowers.” In the sun-dappled understory of wild lilacs look for the lush lobed leaves of wild peony with its slightly droopy, deep maroon and egg-yolkyellow accented flowers shaped like a child’s plump fist.

This is also a good time of year for those interested in landscaping with native shrubs to observe these plants’ remarkable transformation from a long period of dormancy to renewed vigor. Even absent their floral complement, the several species of sage, bush lupine, sticky monkeyflower and elderberry (actually a small tree) produce handsome foliage currently in their most “plumped out” finery due to winter rains. Also, check out the high-gloss shine on the leaves of fuchsia-flowered gooseberry and holly-leaf cherry.

Author and native plant wholesaler David Fross will discuss “California Native Jewels for Your Garden” from 10 a.m. to noon Sat., Feb. 11 in Van de Kamp Hall at Descanso Gardens, 1418 Descanso Drive, La Cañada/Flintridge. The fee is $15 to $18; for reservations, call (818) 949-7980.

When I lived on the East Coast I would never have thought to describe a winter’s day—when it was “an expected high of 9 degrees,” the roadsides piled high with blackened snowdrifts, and a wind chill factor that breached the most imaginative layering of thermal, wool and down—as resplendent. Spending winters in the Santa Monica Mountains has not only enriched my life, it’s improved my vocabulary.

Opportunity for observing the native flora in its winter and spring cycle of vibrant bloom is available from Ahmanson Ranch in Calabasas to Rancho Sierra Vista/Satwiwa in Newbury Park, as well as at park sites in Malibu, Simi Valley and Moorpark. For information on guided wildflower walks or hikes try the following: National Park Service at (805) 370-2301; California Native Plant Society at (818) 881-370; Conejo Recreation & Park District at (805) 495-6471; City of Malibu Parks & Recreation Department at (310) 317-1364; Rancho Simi Recreation & Park District at (805) 584-4400; or the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy at (310) 589-3200.

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