California Coast California Coast

Ice Plant Season, Monterey

Monterey, California, in late spring. The ice plant — Delosperma cooperi, or a close relative — covers the coastal embankments of the Monterey Peninsula in a colour that appears in principle to be incompatible with nature. It is entirely natural. The plant is a succulent ground cover that was introduced to California in the early twentieth century for dune stabilisation and has since colonised every available coastal slope.

A Monterey Cypress holds the ridge line in the background. The Pacific is beyond it, not visible in this frame. The house rooflines suggest the residential neighbourhood above; the image does not reach high enough to make that context legible. The field of flowers is, briefly, the entire world.