Welcome to the blog of writer and musician Andrew Martin. Here I'll post original photographs and observations as I encounter the history and culture of the San Fernando Valley, the City of the Angels, Alta California and the far-flung Pacific Rim… but mostly the Valley.
Last January, during the wettest winter we’ve had in years, I was delighted to find a vernal pool at the Sepulveda Dam Wildlife Refuge. I had heard of them but never seen one.
A once-common feature of the California landscape, vernal pools are puddles in a valley’s alluvial plain. Though rare and precious now, the pools can still be found in protected areas after heavy rains. They linger into late spring, remaining sumpy “islands” of inch-deep water long after the surrounding land has dried out.
By July, the pool had dried and sprung up with flowers. Note the gloomy skies — amazing for July in LA. Without the cool wet spring, it wouldn’t have pooled here, we wouldn’t have the meadow, and we’d be Viewing typical California hardpan with a few desicated whips of mustard.The SFV is that bulge at the northern tip of the light green in Southern California. For some reason we are lumped in with the “San Diego Region” as far as vernal pools are concerned.
Vernals have occurred in all the big California valleys, including the San Fernando, but were most noticed in the richly-watered Great Central Valley. Before 1849, when Yankee interests began a total re-plumbing of the Central Valley’s hydrology, the flat lands would be pock-marked with vernal pools each February. (In especially rainy years they merged to form one vast Valley-wide vernal pool. In those flood years, as recorded in the 1850s and 1860s, one could launch a canoe at the foot of the Grapevine, paddle up the valley all the way to Stockton, slip through the Delta into the Bay, glide past San Francisco, ride through the Golden Gate on the tide, and have the whole Pacific as one’s oyster. I don’t think anyone ever tried it; who wants to canoe in the rain?)
Vernal pools evolve unique soils over time — the cycle of wet-dry attracts particular organisms. By mid-summer, they appear as island meadows of wildflowers. The most spectacular examples leave brilliantly colored concentric rings of flowers, each ring a marker of different growing conditions during the gradual shrinking of the puddle. The little pool in Encino cropped up with raggedy mustard (of course) but also a few encilia sunflowers, and an abundance of milkweed — indeed, “Mexican whorled milkweed,” Asclepias mexicana.
Late August — end of the season
It took until August for me to realize these plants were milkweeds. When they finally started to puff out and shed their cotton-wool, it made my heart sing. Milkweeds are the most important plants for Monarch butterflies, which are facing catastrophic habitat loss. And just as the delight of this realization hit, I turned to find a glorious messenger fluttering around like she owned the place. I haven’t seen a big Monarch since several years ago. Glory be!
There are 36 species of Artemisia in California. The most familiar is “California sagebrush,” Artemisia californica. It’s what puts the sage in “Coastal Sage Scrub,” the dominant ecosystem of natural Los Angeles. Artemisia is that intoxicating scent in the breeze when One visits Mother Nature round these parts.
Artemisia californica, “California sagebrush,” in the Valley bottomland along the River.
[N.B.: Sagebrush is not a sage. A true sage is a Salvia. But the sages and wormwoods so often tag-team across the American West, dominating a terrain for miles at a time, that pioneer bards just summed up the whole gray-green rangeland as “the sagebrush.”]
Artemisia was my “gateway drug” to learning about California’s natural history. I would find these fascinating weeds, up in the canyons, or down in the tules, and think “what are those?” never dreaming they would turn out to be specializations of the same, very important, plant. Stymied by the surprising lack of good, clear botanical photos online, and increasingly ashamed of my own ignorance of the world around me, I started to take pictures and learn about this neglected habitat as a whole. Hence, in part, this blog.
Artemisia douglasiana high up in the slot-canyon of Flow Falls
I’ve read that John C. Fremont was the naturalist who classified the genus. Artemisia is a potent herb in the pharmacopeia, Old World and New. The plants descend from the Aster Family: the Asteraceae, like the daisies and sunflowers. The Asters are the largest and most diverse flower family in the California Floristic Province; and Artemisia is extremely diverse and adaptable:
Top-heavy, the whole plant can flatten out from the center, wide-scattering seed
Artemisia dracunculus sativa — the “little dragon” — or, tarragon
Artemisia is part of world cuisine: the licorice-scented herb tarragon is an Artemisia. Another famous Old World species is A. absinthium, the wormwood from which the liqueur absinthe is distilled. Most Artemisia species, including the Californians, have potent phenols and terpenes, and complex oils and compounds with, especially, cineole and thujone. They have been valued as psycho-active and medicinal by cultures world-wide, from the Chinese to the Chileans to the Chumash:
“Among the medicinal plants used by [the Chumash] was Artemisia douglasiana which was made into a tea to soothe poison oak rash. This plant was also used to cauterize wounds using small cones of dried mugwort leaves, which were placed on the skin and ignited. This method was one of the most important Chumash remedies, along with seawater, datura, bloodletting and red ants. (Timbrook, J. “Virtuous Herbs: Plants in Chumash Medicine”. Journal of Ethnobiology, Winter 1987, 171-180). Probably several species of Artemisia were used in making arrows. The Luiseno, Indians who inhabited what is now northern San Diego County and inland through a portion of Riverside County to the San Jacinto Mountains, regularly made their inferior arrows from A. douglasiana which may also be found in Cahuilla territory. A. dracunculus would also have provided shaft material. (Bean & Saubel 42). Mugwort is reported to have a large quantity of chemical antifeedants called terpenes which inhibit digestion, and thus are unpalatable to insects. (Native Plant class by Dave Bontrager, Spring 1985). Some of the Artemisias, including this one, have been shown to help decrease the ill effects of lipid peroxides (rancid fats) on the liver.”
— UC Irvine website
Superblooming sagebrush rises above it all at Pacoima Cyn.
Artemisia ludoviciana, Louisiana Wormwood, gets the Ziegfeld treatment in Big Tujunga
In California, A. ludoviciana is called “white sagebrush”
Louisiana wormwood: the bitterest herb is the sole life-form that tolerates Fort Sumter, S.C., low in the Lowcountry, soil free, shot through with lead, and strewn with salt
The medicinal oils are noxious to insects, and will kill larvae. Mugwort was the Anglo-Saxon term for the A. vulgaris, the word “mug” being cognate with “midge” and “mought”, or “moth”. (Cf. modern colloquial Dutch, “de muggen,” the summer moths that invade by the thousands if you leave your window open at dusk.) Mugwort herbs are repulsive to insects, fleas and mites and such, and to the squiggling larvae of the wool-devouring clothes-moth, in particular. Thus “worm-wood” and “Mug-wort” are essentially two words implying the same utility, keeping bugs out of clothes. Interestingly, the compound thujone was named for the thuja cedar tree: cedar leaf oil, of course, also being used as a repellent against the moth.
Farmers in the Dakotas will pluck sprigs of wormwood and rub it on the skin, to repel mosquitoes. The oils are anti-inflammatory, and soothing for skin diseases. Chinese medicine seems to use it particularly for moxibustion, the burning of crushed leaf matter into the skin.
Intriguingly, the Valley’s own local Indian religion, the cult of Chinigchinich, apparently adapted an earlier Chumash mugwort ritual scarification tradition into the cult’s initiations. A shaman would prepare a sticky paste made from the white fuzz scraped from the underside of A. douglasiana leaves; then a mugwort pattern was painted or razored into the initiate’s skin, and finally the poultice was ignited to sear the desired pattern into the cut or marked skin. Then, apparently, they would dab a sacred mugwort-decocted salve on the burns until they healed. Of all the Indian religious traditions, this painful adolescent ceremony seemed to horrify the Franciscan Fr. Geronimo Boscana the most. He describes female initiation rites in devilish terms with flames leaping high, and adolescent female shrieks of pain piercing the night. He perceived it simply as “torture” of young girls.
Enjoy some pics of our celebration of Janet’s natal day. The thoughtful gifts and cards from friends and family made a delightful time for the birthday girl. And scope out the awesome Victor Benes sunflower cake!
Click above to see what it’s like to chill in a typical California “outdoor living room,” and imagine, for a moment, you too are lucky enough to live in Valley Village.
The Valley Village View 