If you know a little bit about plants and have heard of Verbena plants, then you’d probably be imagining a coastal dune vibe or a desert ecosystem. Well, this verbena can ONLY be found in two meadows in the alpine of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. Whhaaaaat? Nestled in California’s Tulare County, the elusive Abronia alpina...

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Flat tire. Car towed. Rental Car. Four new tires. Thai food. Car camping at the trailhead. Starting the trail one day late. All these were unexpected happenings at the start of our adventure to find this species and other fascinating and “new to us” plants over two days in the Owens Peak Wilderness. Life gave...

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The news of California’s superbloom has probably reached your newsfeeds, or at least one of them. Blazing bright orange poppies, tall purple stalks of lupines, and endless patches of bright yellow dots have been covering hillsides through central and southern California. Of course, shades of deep pink, bright white, lush green, golden hues and everything...

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Ever put much thought into the most southeast corner of California? Most people when thinking about California think about the towering redwood forests of Northern CA or think of the dynamic beaches and cliffs of the central coast. Perhaps you’re thinking of the mighty Sierra mountains, the vast expanses of the central valley, or the...

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May 21, 2020. That’s the day we started our challenge to make at least one observation per day of living and breathing in nature and upload it to the citizen science platform, iNaturalist. So as of December 27th, our streak is 950 days. So as 2022 comes to a close I went through our observations...

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Another month has passed on our one and only planet, so following this new type of post from its initial launch last month, I present the creatures I featured on my nature-focused Instagram within the month of November in 2022. This month we explored tidepools in two different settings over a total of six nights....

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Ever heard of one? One what? You might be asking . . . it’s a fungus of course! Two actually . . . kinda! The common name is not just four random words smashed together, it actually represents the two fungal organisms that come in one funky package. Overall, the fungi in question is a...

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I wanted to get back to the type of posts I started to write in the early days of this blog, which was a focus on learning and exploring the life of recently observed organisms. I do this often on Instagram, but those explorations don’t often get highlighted on the blog. So in this blog,...

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Witch’s Butter? Coral Tooth? Bleeding Tooth? How about some Skullcaps? Or Wrinkled Crust? Many fall fungi of Northern California are popping out fruiting bodies right now in wet areas, just in time for the spookiest time of the year. In this blog, I’ll introduce you to some of the common fungi that have either a...

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The summer of 2022 was our most stonefly-y summer yet. After making a connection with a stonefly expert – Dave Burton the previous summer – we were on the hunt, with our eyeballs dialed into these prehistoric-esc insects. Autumn Needlefly Despaxia augusta Purcell Needlefly Pomoleuctra purcellana LEFT: This Autumn Needlefly was swept from stink currant along a...

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