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| Photo: Petaluma Wetlands Alliance |
After planting milkweed (the first part of the event was planting our choice of the available plants) we started on the hunt. One item was to draw either a flower, fruit or seed, which we did, but we wanted to know what it was. Now Cay was pretty sure she came up with the answer right away, while I was still searching. She identified "Dame's Rocket" (Hesperis matronalis) I wasn't satisfied with the leaf shape, or the proportion of the petals, but I know there can be a great deal of variation in individual plants so I let it stand. I was pretty sure that whatever it was, it was in the same family as mustard, as mustards have 4 petals, phlox (which I used to grow) has 5. Further research allowed me to identify the plant pretty quickly as wild radish (Raphanus sativus) which is also in the mustard family.
While it's disappointing that Google did not readily produce the correct plant identification, it's good to know there's a huge number of edible plants available in the area should the apocalypse begin.
The rest of the hunt was pretty straight forward: What do you see that flies? Draw a leaf shape. What mountain is that?. The "bonus" question was the difficult one, because we were only on 8 acres, and the trail was basically a mowed path, and there was very little actual trail. It was "find an animal track. What kind of animal was it?" I'm looking around and the hard packed dirt thinking, "this is going to be kinda tough" when Cay points to the dust and says "human tracks." Duh. WIN!
I really enjoy going on these outings with the Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation, even the ones designed for kids or families with young kids, because it always gives me the opportunity to learn something new.
And we won't be mistaking Wild Radish for Dame's Rocket again.
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