Mule's Ears, Tildren Regional Park, Berkeley, Ca.

These are one of our loveliest spring sunflowers. They get their name from the leaves that look like - mules ears!!! The leaves are also fuzzy. Many plants have hairs or fuzz on their leaves as a drought adaptation. If there is no rain for a while (common here in spring and summer), water that evaporates from the leaves gets caught on the fuzz or "hairs". When it cools down, the water drips back to the leaf and is reabsorbed - clever, huh?

It looks like a serious storm is blowing in\. We are close to the end of storm season (it's usually dry here between mid spring and mid autumn), but this is an El Nino year...

There were many wildflowers today. I can't post pictures of all of them, but enjoy the names: wildcucumber, wild onion, wild pea, California poppy, California buttercup, lupine, owl's clover, fiddleneck, cow parsnip.