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.
I’ve learned this is wand buckwheat, Eriogonum elongatum. The wands wave in wild winds on wuthering heights…whereas, workaday wooly buckwheat is wont to wallow a world away, in washes and wadis:
CalFlora.net: Eriogonum – from the Greek erion, “wool,” and gonu, “joint or knee;” that is, wooly puffs on jointed stems.Fasciculatum – ‘the one clustered together,’ fascicular = in bundles or clusters.Sawtooth goldenbush, Hazardia squarrosa. Lopez Canyon is where I first marveled at these elegant Asteracea, waiting along the side of the road as if I were the parade they were lined up to see. They are so common, yet so erect and poised…as if a fleabane or back-alley dandelion got into a Swiss finishing school. Its prickly holly-leaf is the convergent evolutionary choice of many chaparral plants, to retain water and deter browsing. Convergence makes it easy to confuse all the weedy yellow asters and false dandelions. For instance, one kind of goldenbush is called grindelioides, which means “like a grindellia.” And there is a grindellia with holly-sharp leaves just like the sawtooths, called Grindellia squarrosa var. serrulata. I think below is an example of the latter. Anyway, they’re all lovely.
From CE Conrad’s 1987 US Forest Service field guide to chaparral. Note the taxonomy change: the genus was Haplopappus and the species was squarrosus, not squarrosa. Zheesh! Botanists.
“Medicinal Uses: The medicinal use of gumweed dates back to Native American and folk times and it was listed as an official drug in the United States Pharmacopoeia until 1960. The slightly bitter and aromatic tea may be used for bronchitis or wherever an expectorant is needed; as an antispasmodic for dry hacking coughs (alone or often combined with Yerba Santa). It is believed to desensitize the nerve endings in the bronchial tree and slow the heart rate, thus leading to easier breathing; it merits investigation as a treatment for asthma. The tincture is useful for bladder and urethra infections. Tincture or poultice may be used topically for poison ivy and poison oak inflammations. Other indications include bronchial spasm, whooping cough, malaria, other chronic and acute skin conditions, vaginitis and as a mild stomach tonic. Native Americans (tribes including Pawnee, Cheyenne, Sioux [Lakota and Teton Dakota], Crows, Shoshones, Poncas, Blackfeet, Crees, Zunis and Flatheads) used preparations of curlycup gumweed both internally and externally as washes, poultices, decoctions and extracts to treat skin diseases and rashes, saddle sores, scabs, wounds, edema, asthma, bronchitis, cough, pneumonia, cold, nasal catarrh, tuberculosis, gonorrhea and syphilis, menstrual and postpartum pain, colic, digestive ailments, liver problems and as kidney medicine. The fresh gum was rubbed on the eyelids to treat snow-blindness. Effects: stimulant, sedative, astringent, purgative, emetic, diuretic, antiseptic, and disinfectant. Primary constituents: Tannins, volatile oils, resins, bitter alkaloids, and glucosides Other uses: Ornamental- it produces flowers over along period, even when the soil is poor and dry; young, sticky flower heads can be used as chewing gum; leafless stems can be bound together to make brooms. Contraindications: The herb is contraindicated for patients with kidney or heart complaints. There may be concentrated levels of selenium as it is a facultative selenium absorber.” — http://ayurveda.alandiashram.org/ayurvedic-herbs/grindelia-squarrosa-gumweed
Jepson’s doesn’t cite the common name for this flower, which is curlycup gumweed. (Maybe they were too embarrassed to mention it.) One might choose to chew the sticky flowers as gum; it’s also called Tarweed.
At 8:00 am, Ito’s world fell apart. A tree-trimming crew arrived to take down the pillar that held up Father Sky, or pinned down Mother Earth; Yggdrasil, to Ito, the only firm thing that stood between him and the clattering chaos of the garbage truck. For us humans, the View improved when the crew took down the misplaced, rather dowdy, rather dangerous, too-pretentiously-grand-for-the-yard, double brace of 15-year-old African date palms. Now that the Sweet Gums have grown in so nicely, we won’t miss the unwieldy palms. I can now see Mendenhall Peak, for instance! (Can you?)
Ito is still marveling that the sky hasn’t collapsed on us like the top deck of the Embarcadero Freeway.
On the whole he’d rather be in Philadelphia, but Old Ben don’t need bifocals to enjoy his View.
It was an uncharacteristically dark day when I last visited Placerita, breathtaking though the scenery proved. So yesterday, with sunshine and blue skies — also the return of lockdown/shutdown –I hauled my View over the San Gabriels for Placerita gold while it’s there for the panning. My first find was the remarkable hoodoo, at the top of a steep anticline. I googled “old man in a chair, rock formation” in 100 ways, but couldn’t find any mention online that anybody in the Park had ever even noticed this formation before. So to me he’s “Old Ben.” Not a bad View, eh?
I found many amazing shots, but surprisingly, the sparkling clarity of the air made the brights SO bright; and the steep canyon elevations made the shady spots SO dark; that I was pushed to the edge of my photographic ability (or at least my iPhone camera’s ability) to get a satisfying image.
It’s a challenge to portray say, cottonwoods shimmering in the sun, without obscuring the scene with glare or dark spots. So I started playing around with the color-filter settings on the camera.
I usually shun these artificial enhancers for a natural View; but here I found the range of tones and finishes helped to interpret the scenes. Together, they portray a small bit of the richness of fall in Southern California. None of them is the true image, in other words, except all of them.
This is how the spot looked to me last week, in gloom. What color is a canyon?
For the trip home, I took the “back way,” Sand Canyon Road. The freeway route over Newhall Pass takes twenty minutes to Valley Village. But this way, you cut right through the mountains to connect with Little Tujunga Cyn Road, and it only takes forty minutes. Rather than just another freeway trip, this route is a ride you’ll remember all your life. In living color!
Scrub oak acorns and sycamore leaves; Fremont Cottonwoods and arroyo willows; black walnut leaves screening a white-gold sky. Like the canyons on our side, Big and Little Tujunga, the canyons on the shady northern side of the San Gabriels have their own complex flora, geology, and history. All of these are well preserved at Placerita Canyon County Park, just over the Pass in Newhall.
I’ve hiked here before, and blogged about the ceanothus and buckthorns and the “Oak of the Golden Dream.” This time I only wanted some quick pictures of Walker’s “Fancy Rocks”‘ but I saw the main Canyon Trail was finally re-opened. Yowza! An unexpected marine layer was darkening the already darkling canyon floor; it was already 3:00 in the afternoon. But the air was bracing; so fresh and crisp you could bite it like an apple.
The geology in the canyon is also rich and complex, with San Gabriel Fault running through it. The “Placerita Canyon Formation” of metamorphic limestone-schist-quartzite yields the “Fancy Rocks” found in the creek and on the slopes. These were, and are, a highly valued signature of the local strain of Cal Vern Arch, as here at Walker’s Cabin (1920), the home of the family who donated the land for the Park. (The ranching Walkers had a side business of selling Fancy Rocks to builders, apparently at a nice premium over plain ol’ Tujunga or Arroyo riverstones).
An extremely rare (unique?) kind of “white petroleum” seeps up here, naturally distilled by its percolation through the Fault, so it bubbles out as nearly pure kerosene. Don Andres Pico may have been the first wildcatter in the 1860s, filling bottles to sell as lamp oil in LA. One of the wells had a 100 year record of profitable pumping. Small wells still pump on private lands adjacent to the Park.
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In 1841 the first documented gold dust from California was panned here: “Before melting, 18 34-100 oz.; after melting, 18 1-100 oz.; fineness, 926-1000; value, $344.75; deduct expenses sending to Philadelphia and agency there, $4.02; net, $340.73.” The diggings continued to yield several thousands a year. In a future post we’ll trace how, on today’s date, November 22 in 1842, gold from this canyon was turned into hard dollars at the Mint in Philadelphia. The story illuminates how Alta California’s economy operated in practice. Here, from the SCV Historical Society, is the notice of its arrival in NYC:
Until I blog further on gold in the local geology, Impatient Reader, the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society runs the best local history website I have ever seen in my life. You can delve into their Placerita Canyon page NOW, at whim, to explore the fascinating history of mineral extraction in Santa Clarita Valley: https://scvhistory.com/scvhistory/placerita.htm
Over a dozen turkey vultures circled over my head…hmmm…
The Valley Village View 