by Carol Ralphs
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Evening programs are not scheduled for June-August. Recent programs are archived under the Education tab on our website. For amazing photos of caterpillars and to learn why planting native plants is essential for the health of the planet see lectures by Douglas Tallamy at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wzcz8dWyBc&t=20s and the first hour of https://youtu.be/oiAnuJ0KPds?t=419 . Or read his new book, Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard.
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Field Trips at this moment (July 8) are still not permitted by the state CNPS organization. Meanwhile, make your own field trips, avoiding crowded places. See the Places to See Plants page under the Activities tab of the website. Any trail in Prairie Creek State Park is guaranteed to awe and please. Horse Mountain area offers an alpine feel only an hour from town. See the Hiking Humboldt books by Ken Burton and Rees Hughes and redwood parks books by Jerry and Gisela Rohde. Share your photos on www.facebook.com/groups/NorthCoastCNPS/.
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For Your Native Plant Garden
A constantly changing selection of our volunteer-run nursery plants is available every day, 12 noon-6 p.m., at the Kneeland Glen Farm Stand at Freshwater Farms Reserve, 5851 Myrtle Ave. (near Three Corners Market). If you don’t see what you want there, you can ask if we have it by writing northcoastcnps@gmail.com.
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“Why Would Anyone Plant A Thistle?!”
These words from a young visitor at our in-person, by-appointment, masks-required spring plant sale in our nursery set me thinking. He was looking at a magnificent “stand” of potted Western Thistle (Also called Cobweb Thistle for the soft, fine, white, webbing enveloping all parts. Cirsium occidentale.) — upright, elegant, gray stems topped with tufts of the brightest, deepest crimson. He clearly was seeing the unfriendly spines and thinking of the invasive nature of more familiar thistles. I was thinking of the White-crowned Sparrow that had made her nest at the base of one of these very thistles, recognizing an effective predator deterrent, and of the hummingbird that showed up within hours of my planting three of these thistles in my garden, and of the female American Goldfinch that showed up daily to tug at the flowers, trying to get the thistle down with which to line her nest. Goldfinches also love thistle seed, so she would be back for those. Native bees would gather nectar and pollen, and certain native butterflies would lay their eggs on this host plant. To me this thistle was demonstrating the value of native plants to wildlife. To our visitor, who lumped all species of thistle into one, the spiny, unfriendly aspect of this species eclipsed its beauty. Older visitors, experienced with gardens or with pastures, would also worry about bringing a new problem into their domain, thinking all thistles would be as aggressive as Bull Thistle (Cirsium vulgare) or Canada Thistle (Carduus pycnocephalus), bad pasture weeds. Western Thistle’s behavior in the wild, scattered in the roadside, serpentine soils on Horse Mountain, suggests it can not deal with competition from other plants and is not at all aggressive. Just as with people, racial profiling in the plant world can lead to the wrong conclusions. Recognizing the variation within a group can reveal beauty and useful function.