Photo by Doug Mandel
This weekday field trip to the Redding Arboretum brought out 12 people to learn some of the many plants on the trail. We started out under a huge oak tree at the Turtle Bay parking lot and identified many native plants on the short jaunt to the Sundial Bridge. From the bridge and the walkway to it. Walk leader David Ledger identified white alder, California bay, interior live oak, cottonwood, snowberry, and a blooming black locust.
Across the bridge, we saw pipe vine in fruit, Oregon ash, arroyo willow, blue elderberry, false indigo, soap plant, coffeeberry, blue oak, white leaf, and common manzanita. We also saw skunk brush, a close relative of poison oak, and a terrible invasive: eggleaf spurge, a poisonous plant that can cause temporary blindness if the latex sap were to get in your eye. This invasive plant is fairly new to Shasta County but is spreading rapidly. We saw two large patches of well over 100 plants. More pleasant plants included sky lupine, fiddleneck, rose clover, yerba santa, gum plant, and many beautiful purple roundtooth ookow.
For a few, this was an introduction to native plants, while others knew many of the plants we saw on this easy 2-mile walk. Each participant was given a list of over 100 plants that occur along the trail.