Tuesday Adventures in Plant Identification

This semester, one of my favorite weekly traditions was spending Tuesday afternoons in the Bernard Field Station. Every week, I spent about an hour in the space, doing anything from sitting in one spot and observing how different species interact with each other to wandering randomly around the field station and identifying different plants. 

One of my favorite things to do while in the field station was use the Bernard Field Station plant guide to identify different plants. Before Ecology Lab, I hadn’t taken the time to become familiar with the different plants in the field station and I've never been able to identify different plants based on observing different traits. 

One day, I followed a couple of mostly hidden paths through the field station until I ended up on the north side of pHake Lake (the man-made lake in the middle of the field station). 

[1] My view from the north side of pHake Lake

I was able to identify some shrub species that I had found throughout the field station on previous trips, like Yerba Santa (Eriodictyon californicum) and California sagebrush (Artemisia californicum). The week before my time at the north end of the lake, I had spent almost an hour studying the Yerba Santa in a different region of the field station. 

[2] The first entry in my field notebook is an observation of Yerba Santa and a few neighboring plants

There was one plant that I had some more difficulty identifying, even with the help of the plant guide. I observed that it looked like a young shrub with one main stalk. The plant had dark green leaves with jagged and slightly reddish edges. Later, I found a larger, almost tree-sized individual of the same plant. Although I still wasn’t sure what this plant was, I hypothesized that it might be Nevin’s barberry (Berberis nevinii) based on the leaf shape and color. Interestingly, this plant is endangered (there’s only around 500 left!) so it was pretty cool to see some naturally occurring in the field station.   

[3] One of the plants I struggled to identify. Possibly Nevin's barberry.

One of the other plants that I found on my journey to the edge of the lake was the coastal prickly pear cactus (Opuntia littoralis). This is one of only two cactus species growing within the field station and I was so intrigued by it that I ended up coming back a few weeks later to study the cactus more in depth. One of the things that I thought was especially interesting was that one of the coastal prickly pear cacti was growing around some kind of nest. Although I didn’t see any animals during my observations, it looked like something small had built its nest around the cactus plant, maybe as additional security. Although I wasn’t able to see any animals, I know that there are woodrats living in the Bernard Field Station, so this could be some kind of woodrat nest. 

[4] A sprawling coastal prickly pear cactus, growing all around a nest

Something else that I noticed about the coastal prickly pear cactus was that, although I had seen a few around the lake, there were a lot of areas of the field station in which there were none growing. For my independent research project this semester, I decided to spend some time learning more about how a coastal prickly pear’s habitat may affect its growing patterns. 

Although being quarantined at home means I won’t get to examine any more coastal prickly pear cacti in person, I had a lot of fun getting to explore the Bernard Field Station and learn more about lots of different plants I hadn’t studied before. 

Media Credits:

1. Photo taken by Hannah L
2. Scan of field notes by Hannah L
3. Photo taken by Hannah L
4. Photo taken by Hannah L