Saltwater Sweet

Yerba Mansa: Anemopsis californica

Carolanne Sudderth

Mirror Staff Writer

   Yerba mansa is a speckled beauty, and a rare one I hadn’t known of until last weekend, when I was taken on a comprehensive tour of the Ballona Wetlands. 
   Jepson describes the plant as being common in saline and rather wet lowlands. It is, in fact, an indicator plant, an organism whose presence connotes a certain ecosystem, in this case, (surprise!) saline wetlands, or salt marsh. Welcome to Ballona.
   Roy, the Ballona naturalist, said the plant on the bluffs above Playa del Rey is the only one of its kind in the Ballona Valley, and possibly in Southern California. 
   Going to see this baby was an adventure in itself. The narrow road we drove up was second-gear steep and poorly maintained. Its tight, blind curves made trying to turn left an adrenaline-packed experience. The hillside we clambered down was equally precipitous. And it was worth it. 
What the plant lacks in numbers, it makes up for in sheer mass. The huge flat dark green ocean of leaves was liberally sparked with red and white flowers. One plant was a whole field of and in itself and could have covered at least half a square block . 
   Beside that ocean of dark leaves, it was easy to imagine oneself on the edges of the Sargasso Sea where ancient ships and sailors perished when they became trapped in floating islands of seaweed. 
   Unlike the Sargasso Sea, this plant holds no hazard for humans. Passing insects are another matter however, as the plant provides habitat for masses of tiny (and very cute!) tree frogs that live, breed and feed among its moist leaves, and whose voices travel for miles on warm summer evenings.
   It was named for the local Indians. “Yerba del mansa,” means “herb of the tamed Indians.” Early Californians chewed the dry root to relieve pain. An infusion (or tea) was used topically as a liniment, or drunk as a cure for blood disorders. 
   The leaves are two to eight inches long and are held erect atop long, upright petioles 1” to 8” long, as if they were practicing the “royal wave.” Their margins are entire ( smooth) and their tips, rounded. Their bases are cordate or heart-shaped . Think of the two-rounded lobes at the top of a heart and picture them on a base of a leaf . 
   The inflorescence consists of an elongated greenish gumdrop 1/2 
inch to 1 and 1/2 inches tall (actually a dense spike of many tiny flowers) subtended by a skirt of from six to eight white, petal-like bracts nearly an inch long. (Bracts are colored like petals, but are actually specialized leaves. Their leafy venation gives them away—see bougainvillea, poinsettia.) 
   I am told that the flowers are generally white, but when I saw this one, white bracts and green leaves alike were Dalmatian-spotted with crimson as though someone had flicked a paint-filled toothbrush at it