Red Hot

As Salil Bhatt’s images show, the San Ramon Valley is red hot with exotic Callery or Bradford pear (Pyrus calleryana) planted along neighborhood streets.

 

Native color (western sycamore, valley oak and Frémont cottonwood) is still patchy, though approaching peak. The Tri-Valley region (Livermore, San Ramon and Amador valleys) of the East Bay is otherwise peaking in all its neighborhoods.

 

Salil solved the riddle I’d posted last week (Into the Bramble), of the plant seen at Mormon Island Wetlands SP that was ornamented with many white feather-duster-shaped blossoms. The plant is Coyote Brush (Asteraceae), an evergreen plant with male and female flowers borne on separate shrubs. They were blooming across the hills. In early January, the female shrubs will carry fluffy puffs of white fruit.