While some may head to the mountains for fall color, one place to find it locally is in salt marshes where pickleweed turns red in the fall.

Pickleweed is a name used for several species of plants in the genus Salicornia. We have three in Marin: Virginia glasswort (which despite its name is native to California), Pacific glasswort, aka pickleweed, and Bigelows glasswort, aka dwarf glasswort, which is very rare in Marin. Why glasswort? A species of Salicornia growing in Europe was burned to produce soda ash (calcium carbonate) starting in medieval times. Venetian glassmakers who immigrated to England in the 16th century considered it superior to the potash produced by wood ash and found it readily available in English salt marshes.

Photo by Wendy Dreskin

Why does pickleweed turn red in the fall? Pickleweed is a halophyte, meaning that it is adapted to grow in places that would be too salty for most plants. The roots can filter out some salt, but the rest is pumped to storage cells at the tips of the plant. Over the summer, these storage cells fill up. Then, the cell breaks down, dies and turns red, giving the wetlands their amazing fall color.

Whether you call it pickleweed, glasswort, saltwort, samphire, sea beans or sea asparagus, you can find this plant in salt marshes all over Marin, including China Camp State Park, Corte Madera Marsh, Tomales Bay State Park and around Richardson Bay.

We have two species of native cattails in Marin. Both grow in fresh or slightly brackish water. Cattails are named for the brown hotdog-like seed heads, which as it becomes fluffy resembles a cats tail. Earlier in the spring, a narrower hotdog of male flowers opened above it on the same stalk.

Native Americans, and todays foragers, gather the pollen produced by male flowers as a thickener for soups and stews, and as a high-protein substitute for flour. The male flowers and pollen are gone now, leaving the female seed heads. Those tight seed heads turn fluffy when it is time for the seeds to disperse. The Algonquin used the fluffy seeds to stuff mattresses; the Thompson of British Columbia and the Blackfoot tribe used them as diaper material; and Dakota, Lakota and Omaha mothers used them for pad cradles and to prevent chafing if a baby was wrapped in something less soft. Okanagan-Colville in Washington state and British Columbia used the fluff as a dressing for wounds and as insoles in moccasins. These are just a few of the amazing variety of uses for cattails.

Next time you pass cattails, take a moment to appreciate a plant that can provide people with food, shelter, medicine, clothing, baskets, shingles, waterproof mats, tinder and so much more, not to mention giving food to muskrats, crayfish, ducks and geese, and providing nest materials for red-winged blackbirds, marsh wrens and other birds. You can admire this incredibly versatile plant at China Camp State Park, Scottsdale Pond in Novato, Point Reyes National Seashore, Rush Creek and Bahia open space in Novato, and Rodeo Valley in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Photo by Risa George

Many Marin residents notice the arrival of golden-crowned sparrow returning in September because of their distinctive descending three-note song, sometimes thought of as Oh, dear me because it sounds sad. Some notice that white-crowned sparrows have returned to their inland backyards, although they only saw them at the coast in the summer. Those summer birds were the Nuttalls subspecies of white-crowned sparrow, which occur only in California, while the ones returning to backyard in the fall are mostly Gambels white-crowned sparrows that bred in subarctic Canada and Alaska. (Marin also gets Puget Sound white-crowned sparrows.)

This fall, try to spot the fox sparrow, another sparrow that breeds in Alaska and returns to Marin in September. Fox sparrows get their name from the foxy-red color of most eastern and northern populations, but the fox sparrows seen in Marin are gray or sooty brown. (Red fox sparrows do show up very occasionally.) Look for a large sparrow with brownish splotches on the breast and a rufous tail.

Beginners may confuse it with the similarly sized hermit thrush, which also has a spotty breast and rufous tail, but the thrush has a white eye ring and a thin bill. Fox sparrows like to come to backyard feeders. They can also be seen foraging on the ground in leaf litter looking for seeds and insects.

Correction: Thanks to Dewey Livingston for pointing out that Olema Valley Trail crosses Pine Gulch Creek, not Olema Creek, as featured in my last column.

Wendy Dreskin has led the College of Marin nature/hiking class Meandering in Marin since 1998, and teaches other nature classes for adults and children. To contact her, go to wendydreskin.com

The rest is here:

Marin hike: Find fall color in the countys many wetlands - Marin Independent Journal