It’s been a while! I moved from Oregon to Southern California recently, so I’ve been busy with that and a new full-time job. But today, the weather was cool and cloudy, and I knew I wanted to get outside. I headed out, bringing along the Olympus C4100 I picked up in Tokyo earlier this year.
This flower, right outside my front door, is not jasmine as best my research can tell. I think we do get jasmine around here, mostly planted. When you walk by a blooming jasmine plant, it smells amazing.
The trailhead I found was next to a rather dilapidated nature center – it looked pretty closed, but they did have signs for guided hikes and other community events. I wonder if that would be a good way to meet people?
A sign on the trail had this beautifully hand-drawn map of the trail. It follows a canyon for a ways, then climbs steeply up one side to reach an end.
If you follow this Narnia-like portal through the dense bushes, you can walk all the way up to a dead-end road at the top of the canyon. There are a few unofficial but well-loved trails carved through the hardy green shrubs, including a small overlook of the canyon, perfect for a picnic.
Along the way, I encountered a good number of Tropaeolum majus (Garden Nasturtiums), which originated in the Andes mountains in south America, but have become naturalized in California. (Wikipedia) I included the scientific name because apparently actual nasturtiums are something else!
These plants are also entirely edible – but the flower is the most interesting part. It’s spicy!
I also encountered a number of other interesting plants whose names I do not know 😛
Near the top of the trail, I found an old cactus with some new growth…
One of the most interesting plants (to me) that I learned about on this hike was Schinus molle, commonly known as California Pepper Tree. It produces these clusters of small red berries, which are often sold dried as “Pink peppercorns”. They don’t actually have any relation to black pepper, but I can confirm that when tasted, the seeds are quite pleasantly peppery. This tree is also native to the Andes, but was widely in favor in the early 20th century as a shade tree and was planted widely over Southern California. (Wikipedia)
After confirming that they were edible, I tasted a few. The outer flesh surrounding the seeds had mostly dried on these ones, but what remained was sweet with an herbal aromatic berry flavor. These are evergeens, so there was a tinge of that in the flavor. The seeds, of course, taste a lot like pepper. Not too spicy, but they leave a nice burning sensation in the back of your throat. I’d love to see these in a spicy fruit jam, as part of a drink, or spicing a sausage.
So much so, that I may have gathered a few bundles from a nearby tree to bring home and experiment with!
On my way back down, I found another pepper tree – but this one was flowering! These flowers are much smaller than the resulting berries – only about 5mm wide!
I enjoyed seeing all the edible plants along this hike. It was interesting to think about how many native plants exist that can be used as seasoning. Sometime it would be fun to make a dish seasoned entirely with foraged spices, but that will be for another weekend 🙂
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