Flora of the Santa Ana River Trail - herbaceous plants

Most people know this as the Santa Ana River Trail (2E03).  The sign maker apparently did not.

 

I've really only made educated guesses about the plant IDs, so I'd welcome disagreement; sharp-eyed readers should feel free to leave their corrections.  As noted in an earlier blog post, I need to step up my photography for definitive plant ID.  I'm kicking this out of draft mode because I've lost the drive to drill down on plant species for the moment.

Achillea millefolium (Yarrow).  I recently read that you can place this on wounds and it acts to stop the bleeding.  Useful information to know.  I'm a big fan of yarrow but Juli pretends to not like it.  I do think it looks best when it's not in a dense patch.

Symphoricarpos mollis  (Trailing Snowberry, creeping snowberry, snowberry)

The same Symphoricarpos mollis  (Trailing Snowberry, creeping snowberry, snowberry) showing growth habit and giving an idea of scale, which I find helpful for IDs.

Ribes

Cylindropuntia californica var. parkeri (Brownspined Pricklypear)

Artemisia douglaisiana (Mugwort).  This photo was the subject of a previous blog post about variability in the leaf shape of A. douglaisiana.

I don't know what this one is:

Growth habit of the I don't know plant:

A different species of snowberry, Symphoricarpos rotundifolius var. parishii  (Parish's snowberry).  This one has distinctively different growth habit, leaf size, and stem coloring than Symphoricarpos mollis.

Growth habit of Parish's snowberry.

More Cylindropuntia californica var. parkeri (Brownspined Pricklypear)

space

Opuntia phaeacantha  (Mojave Prickly Pear, brown spined prickly pear)

Ribes.  Some Ribes have leaves that remind me of poison oak and I occasionally find them growing together.  This is one where I thought the leaves really looked like poison oak, but the growth habit was different enough to convince me to sample some of the little raisins that were still on the plant.  It was in a totally exposed area and apparently doing fine judging by its size, but considerably farther along the bloom cycle than ones in more protected areas.

Ribes.