Patient Reader, remember how we left Lopez Canyon last February. Green was the scene; we Viewed with rue the Spanish Pasture Mix; we admired the charcoal-rich oak soils; and we marveled at the merry bear-currant bushes sprouting everywhere. Like this:

Recall also the live oaks; their farmer-leaves (agrifolia) create, moisten, nurture, and preserve in place, the soil. View this oak terrace, in three moods: winter, spring, and summer.

LOPEZ CANYON: WHY CARE, AGAIN?

This is the fall of the spring’s Superbloom. Last winter brought unprecedented rainfall. A year before that, a terrible fire purged the canyon; much was incinerated and the tree trunks were blackened, including the oak groves. (The fire followed on decades of nagging drought, which had left these hills scrabby and bare.) This remarkable sequence is giving the native plants an excellent toe-hold to recover and thrive here. The last time weather conditions were this good, decades back, Lopez was the municipal dump; roads were being cut and graded, etc. But now the dump is curbed, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy has charge of the land, and the biome can at last catch a breath and set seed for the future.

I’m fascinated by how the natives responded to the rain. The chaparral is as vibrant as can be. Note how the plant communities have negotiated an intricate pattern of “personal space” among and between species, capturing ridge-lines, rationing out soils, specific minerals, and water among the survivors. (Note how the diagonals mark out the watered spots.)

The saw-tooth goldenbush is a chaparral beauty growing tall and louche by the side of the road. Here she can set her fluffy achenes to drift with the traffic like California bindlestiff-men, to set themselves up further down the pike.

One the most elegant trees I’ve ever seen — a red-osier dogwood, dangling fat clusters of white berries. It’s tough to see, but the osiers (twigs) are bright red. They were used by the Indians in basket-weaving. The tree sets red, green, and white (Viva Mexico!) against the ringing blue sky, to make an especially lovely sight in this Land Of Contrasts.

“Ethnobotanic: Native Americans smoke the inner bark of redosier dogwood in tobacco mixtures used in the sacred pipe ceremony. Dreamcatchers, originating with the Potawotami, are made with the stems of the sacred redosier dogwood. Some tribes ate the white, sour berries, while others used the branches for arrow-making, stakes, or other tools. In California, peeled twigs were used as toothbrushes for their whitening effect on teeth (Strike 1994). Bows and arrows were made from Cornus shoots. The tannic inner bark was used for tanning animal skins.”

— USDA/NRCS website for Western dogwood