Tweakers and Evening-Primroses of Antioch, California

Описание: Here we explore why the "Evening Primrose" family (#Onagraceae) is so cool, with floral parts in multiples of four, sometimes blue pollen (not in this case though), pollen that occurs in "viscin threads", inferior ovaries and big-ass stigmas.

This particular fancy bastard happens to be a very rare and localized member of the family, known only from the San Joaquin Delta region of Northern California, where the San Joaquin River begins to meet the brackish waters of the San Francisco Bay System. This is #Oenothera deltoides subspecies howellii, and it occurs on the sands produced by glaciers grinding on the Northern Sierra Nevada Mountains for the last few hundred thousand years.

140,000 years ago the sediment buildup at this locale was so great that it began to form massive dunes. These dunes eventually came to tower 120' high and spanned the coast of the San Joaquin River Delta here for almost two miles.

As tends to happen when a habitat (and especially a substrate) is altered to a large enough degree, the plants growing nearby back then ended up having populations that adapted to the nutrient poor, fast-draining sand of this new dune ecosystem and eventually evolved to be dune specialists. This is the reason for there being 3 rare plants that grow here, including a wallflower (Erysimum capitatum angustatum , Brassicaceae), a buckwheat (Eriogonum nudum psychicola) and this Oenothera deltoides ssp. howellii.

Sadly, being so close to an urban area, the dunes were destroyed to make bricks to rebuild nearby San Francisco after the 1906 quake, and the place has gotten pretty badly fucked ever since. US fish and wildlife is in control of it now and has led a restroation effort, including dumping dredged sand to slowly rebuild the dune system and provide habitat for the rare plants that grow here, which of course can only really survive and outcompete the invasives if they're growing on sand. There have been some seed-sewing and restoration planting too, but the place is shut down now because of Covid so volunteers haven't been able to come in and remove the invasive Erodium and Geranium and Mustard and invasive grasses, which can easily crowd out many of the rarities here.

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