Soo much fun catching these sand crabs... they almost got away!!
My favorite Flower so far!
Phlox condensata is the sweetest smelling of alpine flowers and it is often so abundant that on still days the air is redolent with its fragrance. In favorable summers of normal moisture, Phlox condensata flowers profusely; in dry summers only the tight green tufts of tiny leaves show with perhaps a few dry flowers. "Condensata" is Latin for "coming together thickly", this is referring to the thick mat of tiny leaves.
The bite of the Wolf Spider is poisonous but not lethal. Although non-aggressive, they bite freely if provoked and should be considered dangerous to humans.An adult is 1/2 inch to more than 1 inch in body length - mottled gray to brown in color, with a distinct Union Jack impression on its back. The female carries it's young on its back.
You will likely encounter one of these spiny, granite-colored lizards doing vigorous pushups. Males have iridescent blue throats and bellies and pushups flash the bright color to court females or defend their territories from encroaching males. These showy lizards provide more benefits to humans than just entertainment. A protein in their blood kills the bacterium that causes Lyme disease.Western black-legged ticks (Ixodes scapularis) carry the bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi, in their guts, which they can transfer to a human after biting and remaining attached for 24 to 48 hours. But a tick that sucks the blood of a fence lizard is cleansed of Borrelia, and its bite reduced to nothing more than a nuisance. They can be found from sea level up to 9,000 feet in areas of broken canopy with rocks, fallen logs, or other structures like old buildings and woodpiles
This large tree grows to 35 meters in height with a trunk diameter of up to one meter. The trunk generally divides into two or more large trunks splitting into many branches. The bark is an attractive patchwork of white, tawny beige, pinkish gray, and pale brown, with older bark becoming darker and peeling away. The large palmately lobed leaves may be up to 25 centimeters wide and have three or five pointed lobes. New leaves are a bright translucent green and very fuzzy. The deciduous tree drops copious amounts of dry golden to orangish red leaves in the fall. The inflorescence is made up of a few spherical flower heads each around a centimeter wide. The female flower heads develop into spherical fruit clusters each made up of many hairy, maroon-red-woolly achenes. The dangling seed balls are attractive on the tree.
It is native to the coastline of western North America, where it is a common kelp of the intertidal zone. It is dark brown in color, shiny and bumpy in texture, and may reach over five meters long. It grows a branching stipe from a thick holdfast. It bears long, flat, straplike fronds lined with small blades each a few centimeters long.
Pachygrapsus crassipes can be red, purple, or green. The back shell is a boxy shape, it is more broader than it is long. A distinctive feature is the series of horizontal lines across the carapace. In this species, the males are larger than the females. The size difference is noticeable after the crab's carapace reaches the width of 22 mm. The female's carapace becomes narrower and shorter than that of a male. The difference of the brachyuran on the abdomen is apparent.
Pachygrapsus crassipes can reach the size of 47.8 mm for males and females the carapace can reach the size of 40.8 mm
This sea star has five stout rays that range in length from 4 to 10 inches. The rays are arranged around an ill-defined central disk. While most of them are purple, they can be orange, orange-ochre, yellow, reddish, or brown. The aboral surface contains many small spines called ossicles that are arranged in a netlike or pentagonal pattern on the central disk. The Pisaster has tube feet that have suckers on their distal ends which allow them to attach to the rocky substrate and live in heavily wave-swept areas.
A native annual and perennial, its flowers are white with yellow centers and resemble a fried egg. Can grow to be up to 7 feet. It's blooming periods are between February thru September.
