Coastal view

  

Black Oystercatcher (Haematopus bachmani) with Sea Palms (Postelsia palmaeformis) in the background, 31 May 2025. 

Golden grooves

 

 

Close-up of Sea Palm (Postelsia palmaeformis) blades, 10 June 2023.

 

Taking hold

  

Juvenile Sea Palm (Postelsia palmaeformis) in the rocky intertidal zone on 18 April 2022.

Ocean surge

 

 

Along the shore in northern Sonoma County, 19 August 2021

A forest of palms

Wow, the Sea Palm (Postelsia palmaeformis) was really tall in Mendocino County this year!  Here's a photo of Eric making his way through a Sea Palm forest on the way to our study site:

 

 

 

Okay, perhaps you guessed that the Sea Palm isn't really over four feet tall, but it was luxurious up there.  There were lots of nice, extensive patches of this charismatic kelp!

 

Above the fronds

  

Sea Palm (Postelsia palmaeformis) from above, photographed 28 May 2021.

With a little kelp from my friends

 

Last week I went out to check on whether any Sea Palms (Postelsia palmaeformis) were visible yet.  This is when juveniles often appear on wave-exposed rocky shores.  They're very small at this time of year — most of the individuals I saw on 1 February 2018 were under 5 cm (2 inches) tall. Sea Palm is an annual kelp that reaches peak heights (up to 60 cm or 24 inches tall) by summer. 

For comparison, here's an example of a large clump of tall Postelsia washed up on the beach in August (with Eric for scale):

 

Little palms

 

I'm happy to report that Sea Palm (Postelsia palmaeformis) appears to be having a good start to its season...at least in a few locations on Bodega Head.  This photo was taken on 28 January 2017.

As with some other more northern kelps, this species didn't do very well locally during recent warm-water years, so I hope to see more Sea Palm this year!

P.S.  Here's a link to a previous post with some information about Sea Palms.

 

Mendocino scenes

A couple of seascapes from the Mendocino coast yesterday (10 June 2016):

 

A breezy morning, with Sea Palms (Postelsia palmaeformis) in the foreground.

 

 

Sea urchins (purple), sea anemones (green), and coralline algae (pink) under water on a vertical wall along a deep surge channel.

Downcoast?

It's been a rough couple of years for some of the local kelps.  They've struggled with the warmer ocean temperatures of 2014 and 2015.  

But recently we noticed several specimens of Bull Kelp (Nereocystis luetkeana) and Sea Palm (Postelsia palmaeformis) on the beach.  Perhaps they washed downcoast from more northern sites?  

Let's hope that this is a good sign, and that water temperatures cool down this summer giving them a better chance at successful growth and reproduction.

 

 

Tall ships and small palms

By special request (via Megan), here are two photos of one of the tall ships, the Hawaiian Chieftain, sailing off Bodega Head on 8 April 2012 — one with the ship on the horizon and another zoomed in to see some of the details.

 

 

The tall ships were in Bodega Bay to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Fort Ross where Russians settled in 1812.  Along with establishing the Fort, Russians explored the coast and documented many local species.

One of the most distinctive species collected and described by a naturalist (Ruprecht) associated with Russian expeditions is the Sea Palm (Postelsia palmaeformis).  Bodega Rock, the rocky islet off the southern end of Bodega Head, is the type locality for Sea Palm (the place from which it was collected when first described to science).

In the foreground of the first photo (above) you can see a cluster of Sea Palms on the rocks in the lower right corner.  But this charismatic kelp is worth a closer look.

Here's a group of adults displaying their palm-like appearance.

 

Below is a close-up of a Sea Palm holdfast, the root-like base that attaches the alga to the substrate.

 

Sea Palms are saxicolous (growing on rocks), but are also found attached to animals such as mussels and barnacles, as well as to coralline algae. 

They tend to prefer surf-pounded sites (see below).  Although they can grow up to 60 cm tall, they have a flexible, hollow, cylindrical stipe (or stem) that bends with the waves.

Sea Palms are annuals, reproducing every spring and summer and dying back during the winter. 

Unless you're looking closely, you may miss the very small juveniles that are beginning to grow during the late winter and spring (and occasionally in the fall).  Here are two recent photos of young Sea Palms, one with only two blades (center left), and another that's a bit larger (~2.5 cm high).

 

[If you're wondering, that's a chiton (Nuttallina californica) in the upper right corner.]

 

Fun to think about the connections among tall ships and Russians and Sea Palms!