California Landscapes

Scenes from the Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Garden in Claremont.

Yucca brevifolia (Joshua Tree), Artostaphylos, and Rhus in the foreground with the San Gabriel Mountains behind:
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Pines, Arctostaphylos, and Artemesia.  I've seen more than one California 'Plein Air" painting where the foreground vegetation is deeply colored and the mountains beyond have this strange faded out lavender blueness to them.  I thought the painters were making that part up.  Now I see they were not.  The mountains really are that strange faded out color. 
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Coastal Scrubland:
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Oak woodland:
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Spent flower stalks of Yucca whippleii:
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The "Majesty Oak":
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Comments

  1. That is a great shot of the spent flower stalks on the Yucca whippleii! As I scrolled down I first saw the image as trees with some strange leaves or pods still attached.

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  2. I'm making it my winter pastime to get out to the many nearby botanical gardens, and RSAB is on the list. That is so true about the milky cast to the mountains.

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  3. Purple Haze..maybe Jimi was a mountain aficionado?
    I hope that the views you posted represent an improvement in the air quality in the San Gabriel Valley. Either that or you picked one of the 5 days per year when you can actually see the mountains. I like to think about the views my dad may have seen in 1920's Los Angeles.

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  4. The air is indeed remarkably better, though of course still not where it should be. My better half remembers attending Cal Tech in Pasadena, and in between asthma attacks, being completely unable to see the mountains, all of a mile away.

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  5. california in winter is so understated and dramatic at the same time. snow-dusted mountains, manzanita, craggy oaks, funky seed pods. love it!

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