Huckleberry Botanic Regional Preserve

I try to come up to this park several times a year in different seasons.  It is a truly magical place.  It's not very large, but it has an astounding diversity of plants.  Many of the natives are found throughout the East Bay hills, but here you literally bump into them again and again.

Here are the first blooms of the eponymous huckleberry.  The buds are from lower down the canyon and the open blooms from up on the manzanita barren (drier and sunnier).

Fiddleheads, aka opening ferns.

Some rare and not so rare plants after the jump.



Manzanitas in full bloom.  The park has two main species, Brittleleaf (Arctostaphylos crustacea) and Pallid (A. pallida).  The latter being very rare, mostly found here in the park and in one spot near El Sobrante.

Another rare plant, Western Leatherwood (Dirca Occidentalis).  From the description of the self-guided nature trail: "Flowers December to March.  Deciduous.  Just before leatherwood breaks dormancy, the intricate naked branchlets produce lemon-yellow blooms at tips - striking!  Due to a peculiar S-shaped arrangement of its wood fibers, leatherwood has very flexible pliable branches, hence its common name.  Extremely rare."  Rare indeed. It is endemic to the Bay Area.

And last but not least, some immature miners' lettuce.