Nature Notes: Summer Solstice on the Los Angeles Coast

Summer Solstice is here.   It’s really our second spring on the Los Angeles coast.  The first one arrives not long after the downpours of whatever makes up our winter rainy season.   Sometimes it’s February, March or even April when brown grasses and golden fields green up, and brilliant wildflowers – yellow, purple and white - sprout up everywhere.  

Most of these flowers are non-natives, but few can deny their beauty as the lavender/white of the Wild Radish join in with the yellow Mustard for a symphony of color along Culver, Jefferson and Lincoln Boulevards.

Now though – at the beginning of the summer season – the non-native annuals are seeding and turning brown, resting until next year’s rains awaken them.   The natives, however, are in their prime.

As I walked to the office this morning I noticed the abundant yellow flowers at the lagoon’s edge.  Marsh Daisy is in bloom.  Lemon yellow with a solid pincushion middle, petals reach out in the four directions, attracting so many native bees.  California Horn Snails lie along the mud as tidewaters subside.  These animals can only survive in an area with exactly the saltiness of the lagoon waters – not in the more salty ocean environment just a hundred steps away, nor in the more fresh water of Ballona Creek east of the Culver/Jefferson split.

Along the water’s edge at Grand Canal Lagoon, Del Rey Lagoon, Ballona Lagoon Marine Preserve and the Ballona Wetlands Ecological Reserve, emerald green Pickleplant succulents are plump and lush.  Saltgrass feathers its way through the spaces near the Pickleplant and Marsh Daisy.   Alkali Heath plants show off their tiny pink flowers, and orange saltmarsh dodder, with angel hair spaghetti-like tendrils wind their way around the fleshy Jaumea leaves.   Isocoma menziesii – Coast Goldenbush pops up everywhere – with each plant growing six or seven stalks of leaves pointing skyward.

Blue butterflies are visiting the native plants.  The Pygmy Blue, the smallest butterfly of Los Angeles, about the size of my littlest fingernail, has just arrived from the cocoon.  Pygmy Blues favor Suaeda, a blue-green succulent known as Sea Blite to most botanists, but re-named the more attractive Sea Lite by National Park Service restoration naturalists growing the plant for re-introduction to Chrissy Field near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. 

The Acmon Blue Butterfly will soon appear on the scene, alighting on ivory flowers from the Dune Buckwheat, soon turning pink.   Last year, I was certain this Acmon Blue was the endangered El Segundo Blue Butterfly, arriving on the scene of Ballona Institute’s newly planted restoration site at the Ballona Wetlands’ Grand Canal Lagoon. 

Why?  It was nectaring on the Dune Buckwheat and seemed similar in size to the endangered butterfly that is hanging on in a few locations along the coastline of Los Angeles and Torrance.   Biologists and naturalists soon set me straight on the subtle distinctions.

As the foggy mornings of June begin to lift and shift to reveal southern California’s famous sunshine-painted skies, the bird scene is relatively quiet except for those which are either resident like the Great Blue Heron and Snowy Egret or those which have come to Los Angeles for the summer, like the California Least Tern.

Egrets and Herons are in various stages of fledging from nests in expanding rookeries in the marina.  For instance, Snowy Egret chicks can be seen in tree nests at Yvonne B. Burke Park directly across the street from the Ritz Carlton Hotel entrance.

Juvenile Great Blue Herons, which can be identified by head feathers that have not yet turned white like those of their parents, are observed regularly hunting in wetland adjacent lands – seeking small mammals for dinner.  

Summer is here.  The signs are everywhere.