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Special Pages #15
How easy it is to misidentify pictures
Pictures similar to the first two shown here were sent to me
by Claudia Lewis. They were from
the trail to China Flats in the Westlake area. I had no idea what it was but
I was pretty sure I
had never seen it before. I thought it must be a garden escape. I sent the
pictures to four of my
botanist friends who are all experienced wildflower people and they didn't
know what it was
either.
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By the time Claudia sent me a picture similar to the third one shown here, it should have rung
a bell, but by then I just wasn't thinking in terms of anything native.
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When I went out to see this plant, it immediately looked familiar to me, and I thought right
away that it was a Mirabilis. But being 1:30 in the afternoon, almost all the flowers were
either closed up or in the bud stage, OR -- and this was where we got confused -- the
part of the flower that appears to be a corolla but is actually a petaloid calyx and which
Jepson calls the perianth, is gone, leaving only a bell-shaped calyx-like involucre which I'm
sure we all took to be the corolla. The lack of petals is a characteristic of this family. A little
further along the trail, I saw some plants with complete blooms and my suspicions were
confirmed. If any of us had seen this, we would have known instantly that it was Mirabilis
californica, or wishbone bush, a not uncommon native in the 4 o'clock family.
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And here are a couple of pictures that show the petaloid calyx and calyx-like involucre together.
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