“Often, it’s not the grand vistas that catch my attention, rather, it’s the small curiosities, the things not common in my everyday, that make me pause and enjoy something joyfully different.” – Ed Lehming

Something that I have noticed about myself, as I’m out enjoying the outdoors is that my eye very quickly picks up on the out of the ordinary. I know many experience this as well. I think we are all drawn, at some level, to things that are different from our everyday. But I find myself spending more time than most spending time with those anomalies.

As I continue to review the many photos I made during my spring trip to California, I recall, very clearly, those moments really savouring all the little things that I saw and enjoyed. One of those was this fuzzy little flower that was blooming in the stoney flats of Sacramento’s Folsom Lake.

This little flower seemed somehow familiar, but quite different from the plants that I am familiar with. It resembled a fuzzy clover. I’ve started using an app on my phone called Halide, which enables me to take decent macro shot that I can review later or run through my PlantNet app if I want to quickly identify a plant in the field. This shot was made with my iPhone 12 Pro using Halide. It’s a ‘decent’ shot, though a bit noisy for my liking, but serves the purpose of a simple macro tool to capture moments like this.

Back to the plant; it turns out I was correct in thinking this was some kind of clover, specifically Stone Clover (Trifolium arvense), which grows in abundance in the rocky flood plane of Folsom Lake. It’s a lot different than the Red Clover that is native to my Ontario home. Due to its fuzzy flower, it is also known as Hare’s-Foot clover. As seems to be the case with many wildflowers that I encounter, it is not native, but came from Europe and had made a foothold across much of North America.

I did spend quite a bit of time, low to the ground, enjoying this delightful little plant before moving on to other interesting flora in the area.

iPhone 12 Pro @ 26 mm (Halide app)
1/4464 sec, f/1.6, ISO 25