For spring break, I went on a trip with my school’s Botany Club. We drove through the desert to Big Sur, then down along the coast to Santa Barbara. There was a great deal of botanizing.

We all made it to the meeting point at 5AM and miraculously managed to fit all of our stuff in the van. Botanists do not travel light. The Jepson Manual (which I now want, along with Botany in a Day, Plant ID Terminology, and Flowering Plant Families) is as big as my torso and the plant press was bigger than my backpack. I won’t list the other gazillion ID books and tools we brought along…

The first day we drove and drove and drove. I saw a lot of creosote and ocotillo from the window.

I wish the ocotillo had been in bloom! I’ll just have to go back.

There were also a lot of Joshua trees and one lonely Canary Island Pine.

We did get to make one stop in the desert near the Granite Mountains. Check out some of the plants we got to see here. I really started to fall in love with the desert on this part of the trip.

I was very impressed with the attempts California is making to use renewable energy sources. Near Barstow was a huge field of solar collectors and we passed many many windmills on the way to Tehachapi. (If you go to Tehachapi, you should eat at the Apple Shack.) I thought the windmills were incredibly beautiful and stood in stark contrast to the oil rigs near Lost Hills. Plus the windmills didn’t stink.

We finally stopped for the night in San Simeon. We set up the tents in the dark, then headed to the beach. There had been a storm and waves in the moonlight were beautiful and frightening. I had never seen the Pacific before. On the way back from the beach we happened upon a eucalyptus tree in full bloom. I was very impressed with the flowers:

Flowers have numerous fluffy stamens which may be white, cream, yellow, pink or red; in bud the stamens are enclosed in a cap known as an operculum which is composed of the fused sepals or petals or both. Thus flowers have no petals, decorating themselves instead with the many showy stamens. As the stamens expand the operculum is forced off, splitting away from the cup-like base of the flower; this is one of the features that unites the genus. The name Eucalyptus, from the Greek words eu-, well, and kaluptos, cover, meaning “well-covered”, describes the operculum. The woody fruits or capsules, known as gumnuts, are roughly cone-shaped and have valves at the end which open to release the seeds.