Redwood City, California

April 21, 2023

We hiked along the outermost sections of the trails from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm.

It was a sunny and clear day with a high of 72° F.

Edgewood County Park and Natural Preserve consists of 467 acres and is known for fantastic wildflower displays. A decade of community organizing by citizens protected the land from development, making this refuge of open space available to the public since 1993. Included in the mix of protected habitats are serpentine grasslands.

A serpentine grassland can be seen in the photo above, with exposed serpentine surrounded by grasses and wildflowers. Serpentine soil is built from a metamorphic rock called serpentinite. It forms from tectonic plate activity such as subduction and lifting, alongside accretion to the continental crust. It is low in essential nutrients for plants such as calcium, potassium, and nitrogen but high in magnesium and heavy metals. To plants, calcium and magnesium are chemically similar so generalists will uptake both indiscriminately. This causes the plant to uptake a toxic level of magnesium in trying to meet the need for calcium. (The California Naturalist Handbook, p 44) Because of these unique attributes, plants and trees that have evolved to survive in relationship to this soil will have a niche unavailable to other species.

A major aspect of this trip for me is thinking about the characteristics of California grasslands. Because I am so accustomed to seeing the introduced invasive, annual grasses across the landscape, I was having a hard time picturing what a native grassland would look like. The introduced grasses create a look of grasses dominating the landscape. In educational gardens, I’ve always seen patches of monocultured bunch grasses. So, seeing the purple needle grass surrounded by annual herbaceous wildflowers was a huge moment in furthering my understanding. Some of the forbs, or herbaceous flowering plants, included Blue-eyed grass, Tidy Tips, and poppies.

When walking through the oak woodland habitat of Edgewood, we enjoyed the wonders of spring manifested as woodland wildflowers. Some of the understory wildflowers included lupines, globe lilies, gilia, Warrior’s Plume, and columbines! Spring blossoms in Edgewood are worth the trip.

This is a California slender salamander. Slender salamanders have a range in length of seven to thirteen cm, which gave me the impression that this was young. It was found in the understory of an area of oak woodland, under the bark of a log on the ground. Many times, when I show pictures of slender salamanders to friends and family, they think it looks like a snake. But then, I call attention to the tiny, itty, bitty arms and legs that are present. Those legs are the cutest. This salamander has a strongly tan color, but there is a range of colors they can take on, including a rust red and dark brown.

In nearly the same location on a neighboring log, we found several small and spry Western skinks. The skink had beige, dark brown, and white stripes down the body and a blue tail. As a group, we concluded that there was a nest near the log they were found. A colony of termites found under the bark, which is good eating for young skinks.

Following a very wet winter, fully of rainy days, we had the pleasure of enjoying a variety of ferns. Ferns require water in order to reproduce, so they expend their energy into growth and reproduction when water is abundant. The three examples of ferns above are the coastal woodfern, the California maidenhair fern, and the California polypody fern. All of these ferns were growing on the dirt hillside next to the trail. Oftentimes, I see people visualizing ferns on the ground, but so often I see them on slopes in wildlands.

Our day at Edgewood Park ended with quite the excitement when we spotted a flower spider that had captured a bumble bee. We were admiring the wildflowers and as my classmate was examining a Houndstongue plant, they spotted the flower spider with its face practically buried in the abdomen of the bee. I did not know that those spiders had the capacity to hunt a bee that was larger than itself, but the proof is in the photo.

Scientific Name Glossary:

California slender salamander: Batrachoseps attenuatus

Western skink: Plestiodon skiltonianus

Coastal woodfern: Dryopteris arguta

California maidenhair fern: Adiantum jordanii

California polypody: Polypodium californicum

Flower spider or crab spider: Misumena vatia

Western Houndstongue: Adelinia grandis