Exploring Close to Home - China Camp State Park

About two weeks ago my brother and I met up with two cousins at China Camp State Park in Marin County.

None of us had ever been there so we studied the map. We came in at the entrance indicated by the purple arrow.

We had to figure out which trail to take.

The trails traverse the oak woodland where things are now green.

I didn’t identify this plant until I was home and got a suggestion from the iNaturalist app. It is a California native called Warrior’s Plume (Pedicularis densiflora) and I was fascinated to read that it is a parasitic plant. It gains nutrients and water by attaching to the roots of other plants, in this case probably manzanita, a preferred host.

This was an easy hike on a good trail with only slight upgrade as we gained elevation.

Common Star Lily (Toxicoscordion fremontii) was also identified at iNaturalist. It is also known at Fremont’s Deathcamus and I assume that the Latin name and the second common name refer to ingestion of the bulb.

My brother, Dave, took off a couple of times where the trail forked and he took the other path, saying he’d meet up with us again, so here it’s just the three of us (me behind the camera of course)

So Dave missed our close encounter with turkeys. They approached us but when we didn’t offer anything to eat they left.

We came to another fork and we needed to figure out where to go and then let Dave know which trail we’d taken.

This did the trick.

We continued through the oak-woodland and grassland heading towards the trail to look over the estuary.

The brochure states that “more than 100 acres of tidal marsh at China Camp represent transitional wetlands at the edge of San Francisco Bay. Brackish seawater mash makes up the park’s marine habitat.”

A view of the tidal marsh with the opposite shoreline in the distance.

This is that shoreline from another vantage. This is looking east towards Hercules. That bigger white rectangle to the left of center is a ship and the Carquinez bridge is behind it off to the right.

It makes more sense to just enlarge that portion of the phot instead of trying to describe it.