rs thrive along with oaks in more open sites. The show begins early in January with fragrant white milkmaids, followed soon by the golden glow of buttercups, until the blues of hound’s tongue and ground iris become predominant. Autumn brings a show of golds and reds as leaves turn color, coffeeberry and toyon bushes hang heavy with fruit, and clouds of creamy cotton-like flower puffs cover the stands of coyote brush.
An oak woodland is alive with life in all seasons. Mule deer browse the understory plants but depend on the acorn harvest for a major component of their fall diet. Acorn woodpeckers create stores of the oak nuts in communal granary trees and excavate nesting cavities that will be repurposed by other residents. As many as four thousand species of insects are associated with oaks, including the California Sister and Mournful Duskywing butterflies. Native bees collect oak pollen, and Anna’s hummingbirds forage for small insects among the growing tips. The best examples of true oak woodlands occur in Novato, with exceptionally beautiful walks along the Bahia Ridge Trail at Rush Creek Open Space Preserve. Here, deciduous blue oaks predominate but mingle with coast live oaks and magnificent large old specimens of common manzanitas with deep red bark and gnarled limbs.
At the sunnier edges of the woodland, California sagebrush, sticky monkeyflower and California bee plant may be seen growing together. This same trio is also at home in the chaparral, a plant community prevalent throughout Marin, mostly on south-facing slopes with thin, rocky soils. Chaparral shrubs have evolved to thrive in the resulting nutrient-poor soil where other types of vegetation struggle. Many of the plants are evergreen and have thick, leathery or resinous leaves that enable them to survive the summer drought. Marin’s chaparral habitats are in good shape due to their dense growth on thin soils, two factors that make it hard for nonnative species to get a foothold.
From the chaparral community, we get two of Marin’s most iconic plants: wild lilac and manzanita. In bloom together on the slopes of Mount Tam, one intense royal blue and the other bright pink, they are showstoppers. All this display is not for our benefit, however, but to attract the early pollinators that depend on them for food and that, in turn, ensure the shrubs are pollinated. When the native lupines flower, mounds of purple spears top tall bushes in the Marin Headlands and yellow ones brighten the chaparral on the Point Reyes Seashore. The county’s native lupines are the only host plants for the larvae of the endangered Mission Blue butterfly.
Chaparral shrubs sometimes blend themselves into the edges of grasslands, one of the area’s most threatened habitats. The lack of rain all summer keeps the forest from encroaching; grasslands appear in areas that can’t support trees. Native meadows are often dominated by purple needlegrass, a plant that deserves far more respect than what it has seen through decades of plough blades and trampling cattle. Some clumps of this native bunchgrass are believed to be as much as 100 years old. One particularly beautiful meadow is situated at the top of Deer Island Preserve in Novato where, in good rainfall years, thousands of mariposa lilies create a golden carpet among the grasses, while bulbs of purple Ithuriel’s spear light up the edges of the woodland canopy.
When winter rains green up protected meadows on Mount Tam and Mount Burdell, native treasures hidden during the dry season come to life as interwoven species of geophytes, perennials and annual wildflowers burst into a riot of color. The show starts with poppies, creamcups, and blue dicks in spring, then slowly segues to blue-eyed grass, yarrow, lupines and shooting stars, until late summer when soap lilies and tarweeds perfume the warm air. Many locals enjoy hiking during this time to witness a field of wildflowers, alive with pollinators intent on making the most of the floral bounty. At dusk, hawks, coyote and gray fox hunt for dinner, reducing the rodent population while filling