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This event has been cancelled following the untimely death of docent Scott Peden, a gifted naturalist. You can read about his many contributions to natural history, and to preserving the history of Big Basin, in Remembering Scott Peden and at Sempervirens Fund. Please watch this space for other nature walks at Big Basin and Waddell Creek.
As we near the shortest day of the year, Docent Scott Peden leads a 4-mile, four-hour walk to see winter wildflowers on a route that includes two chimney trees and a waterfall. Among the flowers and fruits you can expect to see: the bright red berries of the toyon (also called "hollybush" and the origin of the name Hollywood) and orange madrone berries. "We had the new reproductive parts of the mosses on the redwood railings and oak trees, sori [little dots containing spores] on the California polypody [fern], colorful lichens, a couple of California hedge nettle, California fuschia," he says. "If it's wet we'll get newts as well as our banana slugs. And hairy honeysuckle red berries."
Two years ago Peden told us this is a good time of year to see lichens as well, including the rare Old Methuselah's beard (shown). Says Peden, "It looks like tinsel hanging from a Christmas tree, and is in fact what used to be used in Germany as the initial tinsel." Hopefully some will appear this year too!
Big Basin Redwoods State Park (9 miles outside Boulder Creek on Hwy 236); meet at Park Headquarters. 10am. Free, but parking costs $10.
Old man's/Methuselah's beard lichen photo by Tim Gate/Creative Commons
