Plant Stories

One of the first perennial wildflowers to emerge from the bleak desert winter, these friends of ours often hide themselves amidst the protective sagebrush shrubbery. When we first met them, we couldn’t help but make comparisons to the common cultivated carrot, of which we were well acquainted with over years of farmwork. While their leaves and even inflorescences (flower clusters) can look similar to the uninitiated, they are wholly and completely their own individuals and tr

An outlier from many of our Sierra Nevadan Pines, P. monophylla is often more at home among the vast desert skies than the towering mountain ridges. Despite being a common occurrence throughout the eastern and southern range, they tend to prefer hanging along the edges where vegetation is slightly more sparse, rarely drawing attention to themselves. However, venture out into the adjacent Great Basin Desert and you can find entire forests of these pines, often mixed with vario

We’ve been neck-deep inf berry season for the last few months and we still can’t get enough! Seems like every outing this time of year is governed by where we might be able to find the largest bounty. While generally we’ve focused on the tastiest of the mountains, today’s medals in quite a different category. Also known as the “Buttcrack Berry” (full disclosure…I might have made that name up), Actaea rubra is, in spite of it’s showy berries, a relatively uncommon sight in the

Second place is the first loser…right? While we absolutely love our Hyssop tea, each year, we notice this herb is always coming in slightly behind it’s shorter, slightly tastier, easier-to-harvest cousin Monardella / Coyote Mint. Our first encounter with this plant many years ago was also marked by minor disappointment. Walking along a stream around 2500m, my wife noticed some young Stinging Nettle further on down the path. However, as we approached, we realized that although