Not Easy Being Blue --- Day 9/347

Walk: Presidio

Distance: 4 miles, small yoga (with no twists)

detail

There has come into bloom a small tree with the prettiest, softest, most delicately scented blossoms that stuns Ciwt every time she passes it on the way to Presidio pickleball.  It came alive about a month ago, and makes her stop and look every time.

The magnet is that blue color.  There are just so few blue flowers and shrubs she encounters - which she thought might be unique to Northern California.  But it turns out there are very few blue flowers or shrubs anywhere in the world.  According to biological scientists it's a color that is 'infrequent in nature' with less that 10 percent of all species of flowering plants producing blue flowers.

Why? Ciwt wondered.  Again a biologist was there to answer: There is no true blue pigment in plants, so plants don't have a direct way of making a blue color.  In order to do so a few species of flowering plants and trees have 'figured out' (Ciwt's non-tech term) how to go through complicated alterations, and one of these is Ciwt's spectacular tree, the Ceanothus Pacific Blue, which should be capturing her heart for another month or so.