For this mid-morning field trip, we walked upstream next to Paynes Creek and an adjacent water ditch which was being converted into storm drain-sized pipes. The walk was between two habitats: the rich soil of the Paynes Creek floodplain on one side, a hillside of dry grasslands, and a few scattered shrubs and blue oaks on the other. We were close enough to the creek to be under the canopy of large California sycamores, Freemont cottonwoods, and valley oaks.
The trees we saw ranged from shrubby hop trees to towering sycamores, with California buckeyes, figs, and Oregon ash underneath. Apparently, the Valley Elderberry Longhorn Beetle is occupying some of the blue elderberry shrubs as most were fenced off should over-enthusiastic workers on the diversion canal work cut some down by mistake.
On the dryer sections of the walk, we found hollyleaf redberry, California juniper, blue oaks, interior live oak, foothill ash, and buckeyes. The only plant in bloom was naked buckwheat, but we could identify vinegar weed by smell, stinging nettle by leaf, and buckeyes by stem color, shape, and bud. The rocks and boulders on the trail had an amazing variety of lichen species on them, some with up to ten different species on the same rock. Next to and on some of the boulders in the slightly shadier areas were mats of Selaginella, a primitive non-flowering plant just up the evolutionary tree from mosses.