Laura Michet's Blog

Check out my favorite local plant

I think I've posted about this a little in the past, but when I started identifying plants on iNat, I decided to get really into identifying plants that were hard to wrongly identify. One of the plants in Southern California that it was hardest for me to get wrong is Cleomella arborea, commonly known as "bladderpod".

It's pretty visually distinctive:

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Those weird hanging sacs are hard to confuse with anything else. These plants just look weird, too, so they're kind of fun to be able to show to other people.

I started identifying tidying this plant before having actually seen it in person, but using iNat allowed me to quickly figure out where it was in LA. My number one Bladderpod spot is the Baldwin Hill area on the west side - you can find it in Kenneth Hahn and at the Baldwin Hill Steps in Culver City.

If you are looking for something to get good at identifying on iNat, I strongly recommend trying to find something like this in your area - a plant that is so weird that you are not gonna get it confused with anything else. You do have to spend some time learning about stuff in your area, and maybe learning some basics about plant biology... but this is the way to go, I think!