Plants in a salt marsh

A long time ago, Heidi asked me what kind of plants you'd expect to see at Lake Merritt if it wasn't all paved and landscaped.

I started collecting photos a while ago and came up with a few that are growing through the cracks: First, salt marsh gumplant, a cheerful looking weedish thing which apparently makes great stilts for marsh mice that don't want to get their feet wet at high tide.

Pickleweed. Shaped like a pickle, and salty like one too.

This weekend Tom and I went out to Middle Harbor Shoreline Park, a scrappy little parcel of beach that affords a great view of SF, as well as a few more salt marsh plants.

We found a species of buckwheat:

And a kind of aster, which I think is called "Seaside Dasiy."

And of course, what blog post would be complete without a bird skeleton?! We found an ex-cormorant. Cause of death: nosy photographers.

One thing you can see in this picture is the way the flight feathers are actually attached directly to the wing bones (not the skin). Those things are really stuck in there, together forever, huh?

Check it out, even with this crappy camera-phone picture, you can kinda see that the cormorant's eye ring is still in the socket. Cool.