California everlasting
Papery whether it is flowering or setting seed, which makes it the hardest plant here to date honestly.
In brief
Pseudognaphalium californicum, Asteraceae.
- Annual or biennial
- Native to California, Oregon and Baja California
- Flowers January to August
- Fruit a cypsela
Where it grows
Dry open ground, chaparral and burns.
When it blooms
Recorded here in flower on August 28, 2026.
Seed and fruit
A cypsela with a fine pappus.
Here
Photographed on August 28, 2026. Everlastings are the one group on this land where in bloom is genuinely hard to call, because the straw-colored bracts look identical in flower and in seed. The tell is the open golden disc florets in the middle of the head. Crush a leaf and it smells sharply of curry or maple syrup.
By Yggdrasil Springs
Next in the series
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Native to California, and almost certainly standing here because somebody planted it.
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A native vine with a flower twice the size of the introduced bindweed it gets mistaken for.
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The Butte Fire made this plant's decade. It came up through the burn and it is now one of the commonest shrubs on the land.
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Sticky, resinous, and named holy herb by people who used it for a cough long before anyone wrote it down.
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Ankle-deep fern-like mats under the oaks, white rose flowers, and a resin that sticks to everything that walks through it.
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Swept-back magenta petals on a bare stalk. The shape is not decoration: it is a set of instructions for a bumblebee.
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The most numerous large animal on the land, and the reason the mountain lion comes through.
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Grey fox
The only dog in the Americas that climbs trees, and it does it to get away from the other dogs.
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Twelve-spotted skimmer
Three black spots on each wing, and the white ones between them mean it is a male.
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California whiptail
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