May Day 2023

Viewing blossoms of California's native plants, now in Superbloom thanks to the Atmospheric Rivers this Rainy Season; with Extracts from ...

May Poem IV, by Anonymous @1500
Oxford Book of Scottish Verse

Bush poppies, Dendromocon rigida, San Gabriel Fault

Golden poppies, Eschscholzia californica, Antelope Valley Poppy Preserve

Spring in Griffith Park

Be glaid, al ye that luvaris bene, 
For now hes May depaynt with grene
The hillis, valis and the medis,
And flouris lustely upspreidis.

Black sage, Salvia mellifera, in Griffith Park

Awalk out of your sluggairdy
To hear the birdis melody,
Quhois suggourit* nottis loud and cleir,
Is now ane parradice to hear.
     (*sugared)

Sugar bush on the LA River Greenway

Rhus ovata

Arroyo willow, Salix lasiolepis

Mule fat, Baccharis salicifolia
("leaves like a willow")

Western redbud, Cercis occidentalis

Bush anemone, Carpentaria californica

 

Ribes speciosum... Fuchsia-flower gooseberries!

Mendenhall Ridge, top of the LA River watershed

Go, walk upon sum rever fair;

Go, tak the fresch and holsum air;
Go, luk upon the flurist fell;
Go, feill the herbis plesand smell,
Quhilk will your comfort gar incres,
And all avoid your havines...

Flow Falls, La Tuna Canyon

Freshet in Griffith Park, Western sycamores

Platanus racemosa

White sage, Salvia apiana

LA River Greenway, Studio City

Giant wild rye

Leymous condensatus

Behald the verdure fresch with hew,

Powdderit with grene, quhyte and blew,
Quhairwith dame Flora in this May
Dois richely all the field array.

Lupines on Hansen Dam; meadow, arroyo, "sky" lupines - 14 local species;

...including the spectacular bush lupine,
Lupinus longifolium

Our state flower is a great state flower!

Fiddlenecks (yellow), poppies (orange), and caterpillar phacelia (lavender)...

at the Antelope Valley Poppy Preserve

California goldfields, Lasthenia californica

Blue dicks nod heads of blue to purple....
Dipterostemon capitatus; formerly
Dichelostema capitatum, hence "dicks"

...but who knew they also come in white?

The rare Nevins barberry, practically endemic to Griffith Park

Mahonia nevinii

 

And all ye flouris that dois spreid
Lay furth your levis upoun breid*,
And welcum May with benyng* cheir,
The quene of every moneth cleir.
        (*in full display; *benign)

These beauties are all over the Hollywood Hills; I think
they must be a kind of penstemon, but they're hard
to pin down. (I don't think they're purple loosestrife.)

Golden monkeyflowers 

 Mimulus diplacus, "Jelly-bean gold" variety

California everlasting - Pseudognaphalium californicum

Coast Indian paintbrush, Castilleja affinis

And every man thank in his mynd
The God of Nature and of Kynd,
Quhilk ordanit all for our behufe
The erd undir, the air abufe,
Bird, beist, flour, tyme, day and nycht,
The planeitis for to gif us lycht.

Venus, with the Ramadan moon, beside our local Jeffrey pine.