If you are homesick for the East Coast’s or Midwest’s fall colors in the woods, enjoy the autumnal red of poison oak — from a distance!
Poison oak is incredibly varied. It can be a vine festooning redwoods, oaks and Douglas firs to heights of 30 or more feet, or a shrubby thicket. This time of year, it can be red and green, all red or bare sticks that have already dropped their leaves. If you are wondering whether those bare sticks can give you a poison oak rash, if you are sensitive to the leaves, the answer is yes. Much of the urushiol, the oil contained in the plant’s sap that causes an allergic reaction in about half the population, is absorbed into the plant before the leaves drop.
Interestingly, many Native American tribes were not sensitive to poison oak, and in fact, had a number of uses for the plant. Costanoans used the shoots for basketry and the leaves to wrap food. On the Mendocino Coast, poison oak was also used medicinally for ringworm and wart removal. Pomos used the juice to dye sedges black and used the ashes of burned poison oak for tattoos. David Douglas “discovered” it for Western science on Vancouver Island in 1830, though poison ivy had been “discovered” on the East Coast in the 1600s.
Because poison oak grows well in disturbed areas, you can often see it right along trails. Look for the colorful red leaves of poison oak in Cascade Canyon in Fairfax, Roy’s Redwoods, on Angel Island, on Stewart Trail at Point Reyes and many other places in Marin.
Ducks arrive back in Marin after breeding in Canada and Alaska over a period of several months starting in August. While a few ruddy ducks nest in Marin, numbers are increasing now and will increase even more next week as birds that bred in Canada, Washington and Oregon return for the winter. More than half the ruddy ducks in North America winter on the Pacific Coast, and 85% of those are in California, with the Bay Area being an especially important location. Though over-wintering males change their rich chestnut color and stunning blue bills for drabber plumage, they can still easily be recognized by their black caps, white cheeks and stiff tails that are often held up at an angle.
Photo by Brian Brown
Ruddy ducks can be seen at Bon Tempe Lake, China Camp State Park and elsewhere in Marin.Ruddy ducks are diving ducks that feed by straining food from the mud. They are omnivores, eating insects and insect larvae as well as seeds, leaves and algae. Females need good nutrition to lay the largest egg in proportion to body size of any duck. They particularly like to feed on snails when they are getting ready to lay eggs.
I once asked a friend if ruddy ducks had a different name in the England since ruddy is hardly complimentary there. It turned out they were introduced to England in the 1940s and spread to Spain where they began to both compete and hybridize with the endangered white-headed duck in 1991. After years of vigorous eradication efforts aimed at keeping the white-headed duck from going extinct, in 2019, for the first time in 50 years, no ruddy ducks successfully bred in England or Spain. The effort continues, with an action plan that goes until 2025.
So perhaps, for England and Europe, ruddy is an apt epithet, as well as a color description. But here in Marin, we can enjoy flocks of these winter visitors in their native habitat at Bon Tempe Lake, China Camp State Park, Rush Creek Preserve, Jean and John Starkweather Shoreline Park in San Rafael, the Las Gallinas water reclamation ponds and many other locations.
Wendy Dreskin has led the College of Marin nature/hiking class Meandering in Marin since 1998, and teaches other nature classes for adults and children. To contact her, go to wendydreskin.com
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September 20, 2021 at 02:00AM
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Marin’s fall color comes from poison oak - Marin Independent Journal
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