#PickeringiaMontana tomentosa, Woolly #ChaparralPea. A spiny legume shrub. This variety has fuzzy leaves that give it a beautiful silvery color. It usually blooms from May-August but this one was blooming in December for some reason. Even more exciting because it was the first time I’ve ever seen it in bloom. It’s stunning! Just the foliage itself is lovely but then the flower is about the same color as most of the Lathyrus vestitius (chaparral sweet pea) but significantly larger in size, like Lathyrus splendens (Campo pea/pride of California). And then of course it’s not a sweet pea vine like those two but a gnarly looking spiky bush! It grows all over the beautiful #OtayMountain, which has a lot of rare and fragile plant and animal species. #OtayMountainWilderness #OtayMountainTruckTrail #CaliforniaNativePlants Unfortunately, this mountain happens to be located right along an imaginary line on the ground that human beings are fighting about, so we’ve been bulldozing up steep grades erecting a fence that will fragment those populations in the interest of separating us from our neighbors and making racists happy. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ #humanpriorities #unbuildthewall #noborderwall #usmexicoborder #nohumanisillegal (at Otay Mountain Wilderness Area) https://www.instagram.com/p/CXeYAW-FSa4/?utm_medium=tumblr
