Swanton Berry Farm and the joys of Highway 1

I might come back with another post or two about my trip to Europe, but for now I'll talk about my trip down the coast towards Santa Cruz this past weekend.  I have done this trip many times.  My best friend studied at UC Santa Cruz and I visited her there often at the time.  And once she moved up to the Bay Area proper we often made trips down the coast to Santa Cruz to visit.

Our regular route is across the 92 to Half Moon Bay and then south.  There is a lot to do on this little stretch of coast, and lots of cool beaches right on the side of the highway to stop and hang out at.  But what prompted this trip was my desire to go pick berries at Swanton Berry Farm.

This is an organic farm that uses unionized labor.  How much better could you feel about where your food comes from?  Well even better if you pick the food yourself.  They have a U-pick service for some of their crops depending on the season.  Right now they have strawberries and blackberries.  I think they are known locally for the olallieberries, but I missed the season.  Next time.  Later in the year they also have kiwis to pick.  Yum.  My best friend couldn't come, but it was easy finding volunteers.

I have to say the strawberries were some of the best I've ever had.  The blackberries were good, but not supersweet. I think they need a little more time to ripen.  They were great with a little vanilla yogurt though.  The strawberries I didn't want to dilute at all, so they all got eaten fresh.

If you do decide to cruise down this stretch of Highway 1, I suggest you also stop in Pescadero at the Arcangeli Grocery Co. to try the artichoke garlic herb bread.  This stuff is amazing.  I always get one loaf to eat on the drive and at least one to take home.  There's also the Bonny Doon vineyard for some winetasting and the giant haybale maze at Arata Pumpkin Farm.  And of course don't forget to stop at one of the many beaches to eat your bread, berries, and drink your wine.

Alpine wildflowers part 2

 So we saw way too many wildflowers on our hike in the Bernese Oberland to put them all in one post.  So here are a few more.  I thought this one might be some sort of rhododendron and it was.  Rhododendron hirsutum.

This little ball of yellow is called Anke bauli in the local Swiss German dialect, which literally translates as little butterball.  Its Latin name is Trollius europaeus.

This one had a very unique flower and according to the flora at the hut was Silene vulgaris.  According to wikipedia parts of the plant are edible, but I'm not sure I'd rely on wikipedia to know what's edible and what's not.

And everyone needs a sneed.  This weird Dr. Seuss looking thing is an Anemone alpina after it was done flowering.

 The first of the photos below is, I believe, Phyteuma orbiculare.  And the second is Rhinanthus minor.  Both very unusual flowers.  The phyteuma's common name in English is Rampion but in Italian is Raponzolo and may be where Rapunzel got her name in the story.  While Rhinanthus minor is hemi-parasitic (i.e. getting some of its nutrients from neighboring plants) like our Indian paintbrush.

The last three flowers I tracked down with the help of this website about Alpenblume, or Alpine flowers.  It's searchable by color, month and size of blooms.

Wildflowers and hiking in the Swiss Alps

So one of the reasons I haven't been blogging lately is that I was in Europe for 2 1/2 weeks.  I went for a friend's wedding and to visit several other friends, so I had a wonderfully busy time.  One of the many highlights was a 2 day hike in the Bernese Oberland of Switzerland.  We parked in Lauterbrunnen and then took a gondol up part of the mountain and then were on our way.

While keeping one eye on the incredibly beautiful views of mountains, valleys and glaciers, I also kept one eye down on the ground to look at all the wildflowers.  And there were a lot.  A beautiful variety of flowers, some familiar, but mostly new to me.

One of the familiar flowers was yarrow.  Quite a bit of it along the trail.  And this one reminded me of elegant clarkia at first, until I realized it was fireweed (Epilobium angustifolium).

I saw what I was sure was delicate rose foliage and a rosehip a little ways off the trail.  I asked my friend's uncle, our unofficial guide, who hikes often in the Bernese Oberland and grew up nearby if it could be a wild rose.  He said, no we were too high up for wild roses.  But then a little further up the trail we saw this.  I had in fact seen a wild rose.

Another pleasant surprise was this lily.  According to a book I found out at the hut we stayed at that night it was Lilium martagon, or Turk's cap lily.  Really beautiful and unexpected.

Here's some type of ranunculus.  My best guess is Ranunculus thora, but I'm not sure.

And a truly wonderful suprise was this little orchid.  It's definitely in the genus Dactylorhiza, but I'm not sure of the species.  It might be traunsteineri, but just as possible are incarnata, maculata, or fuchsii.  I'll try and do a little more digging.

More to come.

Bay Area Edible Plants - The Flavors of Home Book Review

So my trip to Huckleberry Preserve looking for ripe berries was in part inspired by a book I bought a few months ago.  The Flavors of Home - A Guide to Wild Edible Plants of the San Francisco Bay Area by Margit Roos-Collins, published by Heyday Books of Berkeley.  This is a great book that talks about many edible species of plants, both native and introduced, that are commonly found here in the Bay Area.  It details where to find them and when and gives some information on identifying the plants.

Some of the descriptions and illustrations leave something to be desired, so you'll want to find another book or person who knows to help you ID plants before chomping your way through the woods.  But once you are absolutely sure you can ID the plant and know which parts are edible it makes a nice addition to your hike.  I sometimes eat things on hikes or gather them to bring them home, and people I know often ask me if I'm sure it's edible, or how I know I can eat that, distrusting the food that grows all around us.  There are poisonous plants that grow here, but Roos-Collins addresses this in one of my favorite lines of the book found in the introduction: "Just remember that we are programmed through millions of years of evolution, to be naturally good at foraging.  Anyone who can tell a cabbage from a head of iceberg lettuce can learn to select edible wild plants with confidence."

Some of the plants she mentions I've already eaten, like miners' lettuce and nasturtium.  One of the more interesting chapters was on edible seaweeds.  I haven't tried any of those yet, and have been fairly cautious but I have tried some things already that I read about in the book.  I ate some chickweed, a leafy green weed that grows in all sorts of places, including people's gardens.  And I ate some madrone blossoms.  They were very interesting.  The blossoms had a papery texture, but then a very pleasant sweet aftertaste.  Hopefully soon I'll be able to add to the list.

Huckleberry Preserve - Failed berry foraging walk

So even though I didn't find any berries on my walk, as explained on my last post, there was plenty to keep my interest.  There was hairy vine honeysuckle (Lonicera hispidula var vacillans) in bloom and some huckleberries just starting to form.  They are a reliable harvest, but much later in the year.

There was a very interesting grass's seedhead.  Probably not native, but beautiful all the same.

There was some ocean spray aka cream bush (Holodiscus discolor), whose buds supposedly taste like thyme, but most were a little too dry for my taste.  Others would have worked, but I didn't try any.

The flowers on these miner's lettuce were the most beautiful shade of purple.  I'm used to seeing white blooms.  Is this a variety, or do the blooms change color with age?

And nearby was a carpet of yerba buena (Satureja douglasii).  I love the aroma of its leaves. I don't remember seeing this growing wild here before.  It seems very happy.

I think these might be silktassle berries.  And then this little, yellow, mystery flower/weed.  Anyone know for sure what either is?

Huckleberry Preserve - Attempted berry foraging edition

So I went up to Huckleberry preserve in hopes of finding thimbleberries, a native, and supposedly delicious berry I have yet to taste.  Well the first plants I found were only in flower.  And while there were some berries after all further down the trail, none of them were ripe yet.  It will have to wait till later.

This park always amazes me with it's variety of native plants and a wonderful, quiet beauty.  Here is filtered sunlight on California grape.

I also saw a bee at work on these blackberry blossoms and another one that seems to have passed out drunk from the monkeyflower nectar.  He didn't move for a good minute or more.  Better for my camera.

 I don't know if I'm more aware, but I swear that some plants are more common now than just a few years ago.  California rose for example is scattered along the trail in quite a few spots now.  Here's a rosehip just starting to form.  And although most of the rose blooms were done for the year, a few more were getting ready to open.

Another reason I came to the preserve was to look for California hazelnuts (Corylus cornuta var californica).  Also edible, but not quite ripe.  A very strange, but beautiful housing for the future nuts. And the buds just awakening.

And I wanted to see if there were any ribes berries to sample.  The ribes species that grow in the park I don't think are very tasty, but I'm still curious to try some.  They weren't ripe either.

It seems like our wet and late winter pushed some things back from their usual cycle.   Luckily I didn't mind just having a pleasant walk through the woods.