On the Trail

Rock art


 

 

The natural landscape typically wows on a grand scale, with plunging waterfalls and erupting volcanoes, bubbling geysers and towering summits, gigantic waves and spectacular canyons.

What’s up underfoot, or at ground level, is easy to overlook when faced with such lofty, thrilling distractions.

On trails in the Santa Monica Mountains, inquisitive hikers can amend the popular expression “Don’t sweat the small stuff” to “Don’t miss the small stuff.”

The intimate-scale marvels include teensy wildflower seedlings bulling their way through inhospitable rough and rocky soil to lob a blob of green defiance at the forbidding face of Ol’ Man Drought.

Many a hiker’s hide bears scuff marks attesting to the fact that local trails are frequently crammed with immovable rocks. Time and the elements have worn fissures or seams into these larger rocks. Rain sluiced into the openings, deepening and widening them.

Over time, they filled with windblown particles of debris that eventually decomposed into nutritious soil.

Some of these “nursery” rocks appear to be crisscrossed by narrow green ribbons. These are seams in the rock where seeds were caught and have now germinated.

Rock hoppers on foot, bicycle and horseback may wish to slow their pace to catch the show. A boulder that once presented itself smack in the middle of a trail as an obstacle to veer around now hosts a display of newborn plant life.

The sprouts represent a variety of species, including miner’s lettuce, narrow-leaved bedstraw, California everlasting, popcorn flower, long-beaked filaree and red-stem filaree. They resemble precise miniature versions of the plant they will grow into—as sprung from the imagination of Hans Christian Andersen. The seedlings infuse their stolid rock host with a festive exuberance.

Rock outcroppings may also host legions of shooting stars or clusters of the plump, silvered mint green rosettes of the native succulent Dudleya pulverulenta, commonly known as chalk liveforever. Delicate ferns and dense mosses may be found bearding rock faces in moist, shaded settings.

Of course, a fissure in a rock can be a tough place to thrive. Room to grow to maturity coupled with the peril of excessive heat are challenges.

Ever touch the surface of a sun-exposed rock on a hot day? It can blister your fingertips with the heat it absorbs and retains. What may have been a fine temperature for the germination process might be excessive later on.

Then there’s the competition factor, being a wee sprout crowded into a cleft in a rock with numerous other seedlings hungering for a foothold and nourishment. And wildlife presents further peril, like browsing deerrom that canStace mowJans n down an easy, elevatedubject: mealFW T ewithoutAco n neck strain.

So repeat visitors to any “nursery” rocks should keep an eyeSt out to track the progress of Darwin’s darlings, for here is the astute naturalist’s “survival of the

303 fittest” scenario in action.

Glasser is a writer fascinated by all manner of natural phenomena surrounding her home inea the Santa Monica Mountains. Reach her at ranchomulholla@gmail.com.


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