The Purslane Family
California species: Calandrinia • Calyptridium • Claytonia • Lewisia • Montia • Portulaca
Portulaca, from portula, diminutive of porta, gate, from the gatelike covering of the seed capsule.
The herbaceous plant called purslane (Portulaca oleracea), native to India and Persia, has spread throughout the world; while used as an edible plant in many cutures it is more often though of as a weed in the gardens of California. It is so widespread a plant that purslane has become the common name for this family of fleshy-leaved plants.
Portulacaceae flowers have a regular shape, two sepals, and (usually) four to six petals (but some Lewisia species have as many as 18!)
Calandrinia
Probably better known as redmaids, Calandrinia is pretty enough (I like it anyway!) to be welcomed into a garden. So what if it's a weed? Calandrinia ciliata grows throughout the West and is an early bloom to watch for. The picture shown here was taken at Table Mountain in Butte Co., CA. Our common species is C. ciliata, but there are also C. brewerii and C. maritima, both of which are rare, and a C. ambigua which is a desert region plant. Calandrinia sounds like a good start on a Latin name so I was surprised to find that it is named for Jean Louis Calandrini, an 18th century Swiss botanist and mathematician.
Calyptridium
... from the Greek kaluptra, a cap or covering, because of the way the petals close over the caps
Claytonia
... named for botanist John Clayton (1694-1774) and his Flora Virginiana
Lewisia
... named for Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Lewisia rediviva
April (possibly into May) is a fine time to visit Traverse Creek to enjoy a marvelous display of broken green serpentine rock punctuated by dozens (hundreds?) of bright magenta blooms of Lewisia rediviva. The pink flowers against that shiny, deep green rock compel even the most casual photographer to take shot after shot. The picture shown is not pumped up with color saturation, that is actually what they look like against the green stone.
The story about L. rediviva is that the plant was collected by Lewis and Clark, sent back to England with a general collection, and months and months later the plants actually revived and grew, thus the name "rediviva". Also known as Bitterroot, this is just one of the very attractive members of the Lewisia group.
Another good display of L. rediviva can be seen at Table Mountain in Oroville, but this display is on volcanic soils, not serpentine. The color of the flowers is equally bright, however. The little islands of volcanic cobbles are each dotted with a few clusters of the bright pink flowers and once again, the challenge is to stop taking pictures of each tiny landscape..
Lewisia seems a hardy plant because it grows in exposed, sun-baked soils and rock crevices, but do not tarry: by May, the plants have all but disappeared. The leaves have long withered, the flowers now dried, you will not find any sign they were ever there.
There is a white form listed as growing on Mt. Diablo in the San Francisco Bay Area that is identified as L. rediviva var rediviva in Lewisias by B. LeRoy Davidson. There is also a white form listed as L. rediviva var. minor that grows in the Pinyon-Juniper Woodlands of the eastern Sierra. These forms would be easy to confuse with L. kelloggii, a form which has a more ragged-looking collection of petals and grows on sandy or gravelly granitic soils. According to Jepson, the three rediviva forms are currently collected into the single species L. rediviva, period.
L. kelloggii
L. kelloggii shows up infrequently in the Tahoe vicinity. One good place to go look (maybe in July?) would be on the crest of the short trail to Shealor Lakes, near Silver Lake and Carson Pass. There are also patches on Iton Mountain Road near Brown's Rock. L. kelloggii is about the same size as L. rediviva but the petals are ragged and always white. The leaves are fairly large and are spatulate rather than linear. The leaves wither and disappear as the flowers come into bloom.
L. longipetela
Truckee lewisia (L. longipetala) is listed by CNPS as "extremly rare". I had wanted to find this plant since first reading about it, and it was a real treat to finally get to the right location at the right time and see numbers of this rare plant.
The curious story is that it was originally collected in 1875 by John G. Lemmon in an area simply identified as "west of Truckee". His samples were sent off to the U.S. National Herbarium where they simply sat unnoticed. Finally, in 1913, they were investigated and given the name Oreobroma longipetalum.
In 1967, G. Ledyard Stebbins (an important botanist who happened to be an El Dorado County resident for many years) went looking once more for the Lewisia which had not been seen in its habitat since 1875! He did in fact find it in an area that might have been the original collection area west of Truckee. Later, when Stebbins was retired and living in the vicinity of Wrights Lake, he continued to wander the local mountains to search out areas that looked promising as L. longipetala habitat, and when he located L. longipetala on the northwest slopes of Mt. Price, he listed it as a range extension.
L. serrata
What a treat to see Lewisia serrata, a rare plant that is only found in a couple of El Dorado County locations that shall remain secret. Unfortunately there are people who will dig up this plant to collect it. We can't have that. When I was first taken to one of the sites I was told that the best plant there was easily fifteen years old. It was a little (grapefruit sized) plant with enclosing saw-toothed leaves that looked like green double-edged steak knives! The flowers are small (about 1.5 cm?) and grow with multiple heads on a stem (tecnically, paniculate cymes). This was the first time I had even thought to inspect the sepals of a plant, and as I now know is a mark of many lewisia species, I was quite taken by the tiny red glands that decorated the under parts of L. serrata.
I have been back several times, partly because these flowers are so hard to photogaph! Growing in shaded canyons on rock walls, the long stems are set into motion by even the slightest breeze, and since they are in the shade, exposures and focus problems abound. I made several trips over a couple of years before I finally got a digital camera and an iBook so that I could preview my photos on location. Now, several years later I sometimes think I should go back yet again; this notion is then offset by my desire to not help create a path to this well-hidden location. I have decent pictures and I am not doing research. Perhaps my energy is better spent looking for other unusual plants I have yet to photograph.
L. nevadensis
L. triphylla
L. pygmaea
Montia
...named for Giuseppe Monti (1682-1760)