Bay Laurel, Umbellularia californica, in Bloom (HIking Edgewood)

California Bay Laurel
Umbellularia californica
 is in bloom now at Edgewood Nature Preserve

I was surprised to find that California Bay Laurel already in bloom at Edgewood on a New Years Day hike at that preserve. I could have sworn it didn't bloom that early last year.

Below are some historical human uses I gleaned about this noble plant, when I prepared a field trip report for the California Native Plants class at Cañada College last year.

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I’ve met several people who substitute California Bay Laurel leaves for the Mediterranean Bay Laurel (Laurus nobilis) . Kozloff (p. 248)  agrees with this practice saying “They (the leaves) can be used for seasoning but have a stronger flavor than L.Nobilis.”

However, in 1976 then UCSC Environmental Studies professor Ray Collett[1]told his students, of which I was then one, that the leaves of the California Bay Laurel were poisonous and should not be used to flavor food. Toni Corelli[2]takes a middle ground saying that “Leaf oils may be toxic to some people.”

Corelli also says that native people used the leaves “medicinally to cure headache and as a tea for stomach ailments. Oils from the leaves were rubbed on the body to ease rheumatism. Leaves were also spread on floors to repel fleas; boughs were buned to fumigate lodgings and to fight colds. The nuts were roasted, cracked and eaten.”

The Ohlone weren’t the last people to use the leaves against bugs. At UCSC in the mid 1970’s my college roommate used the leaves to attempt to rid our room of fleas.  Ray Collett also suggested that students who suffered from bedbugs try the leaves.

Modern use, other than firewood, includes woodworking. Woodworkers, include environmentally contentious landscape refuse salvagers, use the wood for a variety of wood craft, including these lovely little Dryad flutes.[3] The makers of the Dryad Flute says, “It is valued by woodworkers for its beauty and the variety of figure and coloring in its wood.  It is considered a tonewood by luthiers (luthiers make guitars as well as other lute-related instruments) for its ability to reflect the sound wave without deadening the tone. “

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[1] http://members.cruzio.com/~rayc/about.html

[2]Toni Corelli  Flowering Plants of Edgewood Natural Preserve Second Edition 2004 Monocot Press, Half Moon Bay CA

[3] http://www.dryadflutes.com/205BayLaurelinA.html

New Bloom for a New Year: Dirca Occidentalis (Hiking Edgewood)

Please Click on the Illustration Above
For More Beautiful Detail

I always like to start out the year as I mean to proceed through it.

What better way than an afternoon's Bloomin' Hike at Edgewood Nature Preserve?

Can you believe the Leatherwood is already in bloom?

A good omen for 2013, if ever I saw one.

I'll Have a Bluuuuuue Schist Christmas, Without You!

 Blue Schist is a rare beauty made from volcanic basalt. This patch at Edgewood, metamorphosed at high pressure and low temperature from deeply subducted oceanic crust.

   

California Christmas Berry (Toyon)

Please Click on the Illustration Above

To Enjoy the Full Beauty of

Heteromeles arbutifolia

California Toyon Berries

European settlers were pleased to find a familiar plant from back home, when they saw these beautiful red berries and jagged leaves all over the hills of their young settlement in Southern California. I mean, come on, everybody knows holly when they see it!

And so.... that's why the California film industry didn't take off in the community of Toyonwood.

CA Coast Range: Smack Dab in the Middle

Every time I come out of class at Cañada College,
 I get to see this marvelous view of the CA Coast Range.

Chock full of blu schist, serpentinite, and chert rocks these mountains are part of an accretionary wedge of the same ancient volcanic arc from which the Sierra Nevada batholith formed.

Go ahead and click on the illustration above
for a lovely  up close and personal view of
The CA coast range from Cañada College

Sinuous Los Trancos Creek

Click on the illustration above
for an up close and personal view
of Los Trancos Creek

The trail up Windy Hill has more than it's share of moments.

Fungus Amongus: The Pink Ones Are Toxic

Hiking Windy Hill 

Click on the toxic princess above

to really enjoy the details

But don't touch, 

if you run into  her on a post-rain hike

As was hoped for, we got a bit of those storms the Oregonians were so kind as to send down our way. Two guesses as to what quick crop the rain brings out in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

I chatted with a mushroom gathering fella close to the end of my hike at Windy Hill Open Space Preserve today. You aren't actually supposed to gather mushrooms in the Open Space, but what do you say? My husband saw another couple at the top of the hill with collecting bags as well. Hopefully enough people are concerned about the possibility of eating the wrong 'shroom that the area doesn't get stripped of it's fungus-bearing potential.

This man was gathering mushrooms under an oak tree. I asked him about this pink beauty I'd snapped on my camera phone further up the hill. He knew just the spot she grew.

"Oh those are very toxic," he said in an English thick with a mellifluous some-kinda-European accent I couldn't place. "They are so toxic that if you even touch them with your fingers, the toxins will enter your bloodstream and .... " he made a vague gesture as to where I might now be, had I had the nerve to perhaps prop up this little pink-topped native plant to enhance her photographic possibilities. The location of his casual gesture was somewhere down the side of the trail in a rather steep ravine.

Don't eat the pink ones.