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Photos and Field Guides, Part 2

© Gregg Pasterick

For perhaps the last time this year I impatiently thumbed through a stack of newly processed photos looking for a couple wildflower shots. Armed with my usual stack of field guides, I was hoping to identify a pair of vetch-looking legumes I found along a creek during a mid-October hike.

The first wildflower, with its yellow banners and white wings (legume flowers have a banner, 2 wings and 2 keel petals...see “Treasure of the Sierra Nevada”) was easy to pick out. It wasn’t a vetch, but a lotus; Lotus oblongifolius, known commonly as Torrey’s Lotus, Meadow Lotus and Narrow-leaf Lotus.

Like other members of the Lotus genus, this species has pinnately compound leaves, these composed of 7 to 11 narrow leaflets. Oblongifolius means ‘oblong-leaved’, and refers to the shape of the leaflets. The flowers of this perennial are small, about 1/2” across, but bloom in clusters of 3 or more blossoms, and can be very showy. (To guarantee successful pollination, when a bee lands on the wing petal of a Torrey’s Lotus flower, the keel is forced open, exposing the stigma and coating the insect with pollen. Orchids aren’t the only sneaky flowers, I guess.)

L. oblongifolius grows in forest openings and wet meadows from Mexico to southern Oregon, and it was a pleasant late-season surprise along the northern California creek.

The second legume, which was blooming only 30 feet or so further along the creek bed, has proven to be a little more difficult to identify. With its violet-colored blossoms, it looks like a lot of vetchy things, but most of them do.

Back east (he said, trying out his California jargon) I couldn’t tell Hairy Vetch (Vicia villosa)from Cow Vetch (V. cracca) from Purple Vetch (V. americana). And here I am again, photos and field guides in hand, scratching my head, bewildered. Deja vu.

About 20 types of vetch occur in North America, many of which are non-native. They are mostly sprawling or climbing plants with compound leaves ending in tendrils. They are often grown as a winter cover crop in cultivated fields, or for fodder, capable of feeding nitrogen into the soil. Like a con in stir itchy for a jailbreak, they frequently escape cultivation, often becoming invasive. The flowers, unlike those of lotuses, wild peas or lupines, are much longer than wide, and they often droop along one side of a dense raceme (not to worry about words like ‘raceme’ and ‘innately‘...I intend to write a bit about terminology soon).