Ephemeral Fairyland
The second half of the rainy winter season in Southern California breeds a secret, magical microcosm in native chaparral systems, and you can get a peek into this tiny world along the main trail at The Wildlands Conservancy’s Santa Margarita River Trail Preserve. It’s secret and it’s magical because from summer-brown and winter-gray, a tiny, green forest begins to grow, so easy to miss in its small size and ephemeral nature.
Mosses – crispy-dry and brown – like kitchen sponges suddenly swell with life at the first touch of cool rain, swathing bare soil and rock faces with a dazzling array of shapes and green hues. Palettes of pastel and neon lichen bloom with the mosses to make boulders into painters’ dropcloths – mixed-media in their countless textures. And on the soil, a truly elfin forest spreads its leaves over the bryophyte carpets.
Everything feels made fairy-size.
The mini moose-antler leaves of Fairy Mist (Pterostegia drymarioides) – also known as Granny’s Hairnet and Woodland Threadstem – drift over the small slopes. Powdery white lichens of the sort called Pixie Cups (Cladonia sp.) offer their cupped podetia – structures like tiny golf tees – full of drops of melting morning frost. The frilly foliage of Rattlesnake Weed, or American Wild Carrot, (Daucus pusillus) that trembles in ground-hugging breezes, is growing a fairy-sized root below. Sprigs of charming Hoary Bowlesia (Bowlesia incana) spring up, and stretch out, sometimes in perfusion, at the shaded feet of shrubs and rocks. Liverworts scatter the floor like intricate tiles: how many different species can you see in a two inch square?
Delicate-stemmed Common Lacepod (Thysanocarpus curvipes) dangles lacy seed-pod ornaments from its sides and holds up miniscule white flower-stars still waiting to be transformed. Miner’s lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata ssp. perfoliata) raises canopies and parasols of all sizes or generous vases of wee white blooms, dictated by their immediate moisture conditions, against the giant sky. Sand Pygmy Weed (Crassula connata) is very appropriately named, and Western Lady’s Mantle (Aphanes occidentalis) would only fit the shoulders of a very small Western lady indeed. And popcorn flowers (genera Cryptantha and Plagiobothrys) may not be good for anyone of any size, save caterpillars, to eat, but their sometimes golden-centered forget-me-not blooms look the part enough to delightSo many of these early miniatures bloom small and white, a near-monochrome here and gone before we notice. But now is also the time when the leaves and stalks of wildflowers that will bloom a little later and more colorfully emerge, also taking part in the first green chorus of the year. The bubbly-lobed leaves of Baby Blue-eyes (Nemophila menziesii) and long, slender reddish-green leaves of Red Maids (Calandrinia menziesii) might be seen decorating these Lilliputian rooms, gathering energy for their coming blue and pink displays.
On the long cusp of warming spring at Santa Margarita River Trail Preserve, remember to step – very carefully! – into the cool, damp, elfin world offering itself up now for careful eyes that are ready to be enchanted.
