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Wildflowers in Byxbee Park
Mar. 30th, 2026 04:02 amI seem to be running an 8 day backlog on blogging about hiking. Friday I shared pictures from Sierra Vista Open Space I'd hiked at Thursday the week before. Today I getting around to posting pictures from a hike at Byxbee Park last week Sunday.
Byxbee is a city park in Palo Alto, California. Often one thinks of city parks as ho-hum. And indeed, Byxbee sometimes is. Especially because it's one of those parks that's built on top of a dump. The artificial hill is studded with methane monitors to alert authorities should an eruption of poisonous, explosive gases be about to occur. But, hey, nobody's going to want to build on top of crazy shit like that, so it's cheap to make into a park!
The grim history of this plot of land aside, it's beautiful in the springtime when wildflowers are blooming. And it's right by the San Francisco Bay— and just out past the sewage treatment plant, so at least that's not in the foreground 💩🤢—with plenty of wide-open views. In this photo (above) you can see the Dumbarton Bridge crossing near the southern end of the bay. The Diablo Mountains are on the far side. The flowers in the foreground are daisies. Mixed in with them are crown daisies. Those are the flowers with white petals and yellow at the center.
At the park we chose an erratic loop, sweeping back and forth over the top of the mound then around the sloughs at the far side. Our goal was two-fold. We wanted to see all the places where we know there are patches of wildflowers, and we wanted to extend our hike to walk at least two miles. By Sunday when we did this hike the previous week's record-setting heat wave had broken, so it was merely a pleasant 75° on the first day of spring instead of a sweltering 90°.
My phone's plant identifier says this one's a Pride of Madeira. That's Madeira as in a plant native to the Island of Madeira, Portugal, off the coast of Morocco. The climate here would be similar so I'm not surprised it thrives. I presume it was imported. I doubt a swallow, African or European, carried seeds all the way here.
This thicket of wildflowers is Perez's Sea Lavender. We have them growing outside our house, too. Those insects pollinating them are butterflies, not moths. At first we thought the white one was a moth. Then I looked up how to tell the difference between butterflies and moths. You can Google it yourself if you want, but I'll tell you the easiest diagnostic: it's in the antennae. Butterflies have thin, mostly straight antennae. Moths having curving, thick, comb-like antenna. Plus moths have chunkier, hairy bodies. These are both butterflies.
Here's an example view from down near the sloughs. The water in the south bay is very shallow, and a maze of levees control flow for salt marshes and things like that. Being 30' up on the hill affords nicer distance views, even as it is atop all the explosive, poisonous gases, but down here you can see a fairly long way, too. Those mountains in the background are easily 15 miles away, straight-line distances. In the foreground, my phone thinks those flowers are wild radish.
As we looped around back toward the trailhead from here we watched a northern harrier swoop over the hills. At least I think it was a northern harrier. It was generally too far away to be sure, and I didn't have my telephoto camera with me. But it seemed to have a white "rump patch" at the base of the tail. That's a cue for it being a harrier. That, and its flight pattern of swooping low over grasses and marsh, often just 1 or 2 meters above the ground.
Byxbee is a city park in Palo Alto, California. Often one thinks of city parks as ho-hum. And indeed, Byxbee sometimes is. Especially because it's one of those parks that's built on top of a dump. The artificial hill is studded with methane monitors to alert authorities should an eruption of poisonous, explosive gases be about to occur. But, hey, nobody's going to want to build on top of crazy shit like that, so it's cheap to make into a park!
The grim history of this plot of land aside, it's beautiful in the springtime when wildflowers are blooming. And it's right by the San Francisco Bay— and just out past the sewage treatment plant, so at least that's not in the foreground 💩🤢—with plenty of wide-open views. In this photo (above) you can see the Dumbarton Bridge crossing near the southern end of the bay. The Diablo Mountains are on the far side. The flowers in the foreground are daisies. Mixed in with them are crown daisies. Those are the flowers with white petals and yellow at the center.
At the park we chose an erratic loop, sweeping back and forth over the top of the mound then around the sloughs at the far side. Our goal was two-fold. We wanted to see all the places where we know there are patches of wildflowers, and we wanted to extend our hike to walk at least two miles. By Sunday when we did this hike the previous week's record-setting heat wave had broken, so it was merely a pleasant 75° on the first day of spring instead of a sweltering 90°.
My phone's plant identifier says this one's a Pride of Madeira. That's Madeira as in a plant native to the Island of Madeira, Portugal, off the coast of Morocco. The climate here would be similar so I'm not surprised it thrives. I presume it was imported. I doubt a swallow, African or European, carried seeds all the way here.
This thicket of wildflowers is Perez's Sea Lavender. We have them growing outside our house, too. Those insects pollinating them are butterflies, not moths. At first we thought the white one was a moth. Then I looked up how to tell the difference between butterflies and moths. You can Google it yourself if you want, but I'll tell you the easiest diagnostic: it's in the antennae. Butterflies have thin, mostly straight antennae. Moths having curving, thick, comb-like antenna. Plus moths have chunkier, hairy bodies. These are both butterflies.
Here's an example view from down near the sloughs. The water in the south bay is very shallow, and a maze of levees control flow for salt marshes and things like that. Being 30' up on the hill affords nicer distance views, even as it is atop all the explosive, poisonous gases, but down here you can see a fairly long way, too. Those mountains in the background are easily 15 miles away, straight-line distances. In the foreground, my phone thinks those flowers are wild radish.
As we looped around back toward the trailhead from here we watched a northern harrier swoop over the hills. At least I think it was a northern harrier. It was generally too far away to be sure, and I didn't have my telephoto camera with me. But it seemed to have a white "rump patch" at the base of the tail. That's a cue for it being a harrier. That, and its flight pattern of swooping low over grasses and marsh, often just 1 or 2 meters above the ground.
