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Saturday, 1 July 2006 (Old Ridge Route and Bouquet Canyon, San Gabriel
Mts)
Today I went in search of the elusive deltoid balsamroot (Balsamorhiza
deltoidea) which Richard and I had been looking for ever since
we saw it listed in Milt Stark's book of Antelope Valley wildflowers.
I had e-mailed Milt to see if he could give me some specific locations
to look for it, and armed with his gracious and informative answer,
I set out up the I-15 toward Gorman, turning east on the 138 and then
diverging onto the Old Ridge Route. The Old Ridge Route was built in
1915 and was the first direct road to cross the mountains. Prior to
its construction, motorists travelling north from Los Angeles had to
go on the 101 up the coast or by a roundabout route that is now SR-14
and SR-58 through Mojave and Bakersfield. It goes 26 miles from Gorman
to Castaic, reaches its high point at 4,233', and was once graced along
the way with restaurants, hotels, and gas stations, which people patronized
as they travelled along at a stately 15 mph. When Highway 99 (eventually
to become the I-5) was completed in 1933, the Old Ridge Route was no
longer necessary, but it has been maintained by the Forest Service and
was a passable road until it was damaged by the heavy rains of January,
2005, and was closed. Subsequently, the northern five miles of it have
been reopened, and it is to be hoped that the rest of it will be too.
It frequently happens to me that the locational information I get from
people doesn't make complete sense to me until I am actually in the
area, and of course then it is too late to ask details that would make
the directions easier to follow, and so it was in this case. Not being
entirely sure of where the Balsamorhiza was along this road,
I crept along for several miles carefully perusing the side of the road
and looking for the bank on top of which Milt had said he saw a colony
of it. I also had no idea how long ago he had seen it and as the day
wore on without spotting any sign of it, I began to think it wasn't
there anymore. It is a species with large deltoid dark-green leaves
and this should have stood out fairly well among the many buckwheats
and other plants that lined the roadside. Southern mountain woolstar
(Eriastrum densifolium ssp.
austromontanum) was very much in evidence with its bunches of
beautiful blue flowers, a sight that is somewhat unexpected on a July
day in a very dry area. Some cobweb thistles (Cirsium
occidentale var. occidentale) poked up out of the buckwheats
and sagebrush along with the occasional scarlet bugler.
Milt had said that the plants were, he thought, within the first mile
after the beginning of the Old Ridge Route, which I thought was where
the unsurfaced road began, and I had driven several miles without seeing
it. But then I began to suspect that it actually began at the 138 and
that I just hadn't been looking soon enough, so I drove back and retraced
my steps slowly over that first mile, and very quickly saw what looked
like it on a grassy bank above and on the south side of the road. I
pulled over and managed to climb across a wire fence to the first of
the plants, and Voila! There it was, several clumps with the distinctively-shaped
leaves, but even though it had flowering stems and
even some dried up flowers, it was clearly past its bloom time. But
it had definitely bloomed this year and so I knew where I could find
it again next year. In the same area I found quite a few giant four
o'clocks (Mirabilis multiflora)
and along the road some very robust rose snapdragons (Antirrhinum
multiflorum).
Next I turned off on the Pine Canyon Road. This is the road that goes
past the trailhead to the Liebre Mountain trail, and it had been burned
rather badly by the Pine Fire in 2004. Very soon I saw another colony
of it in about the same shape. Along the road through the burn area
there was a beautiful display of poodle-dog bush (Turricula
parryi). I continued on the Pine Canyon Road (N2), turned right
on the Elizabeth Lake Road (still N2) and right again on Bouquet Canyon
Road. Milt had said that the second colony was just over the Lincoln
Crest as you head south from the Leona Valley toward the Bouquet Canyon
Reservoir, and sure enough even though they were on another grassy hillside
several hundred yards away from the road, I had no trouble seeing them.
Walking over to them filled my socks and shoes with sharp grass seeds,
and when I got to them I was disappointed to find that not a single
plant even had a flowering stem on it, so these must not have bloomed
this year for some reason. When I got back to the car, I had to take
my shoes and socks off and drive home barefoot. I hadn't really expected
the plants to be flowering because Munz gives April to June as the blooming
period, but at least I had accomplished what I set out to do, to locate
them for next year.
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Sunday, 2 July 2006 (San Bernardino Mts)
Today I drove up into the San Bernardinos with my friend Richard Sapiro.
My goal was to photograph a species I had only seen pictures of but
which I had gotten a location for from Bob Reed, the Curator of the
Heaps Peak Arboretum over near Lake Arrowhead, Rothrock's nama (Nama
rothrockii). I figured we would find the Nama, then spend
some time over in the Holcomb Valley area, and finally go down to the
Arboretum to do some more follow-up on the plant list I was trying to
prepare for them, since the one they now have is about 20 years old.
Bob had given me very good directions and as we drove up the dusty and
bumpy Van Dusen Canyon Road, we saw Columbia cutleaf (Hymenopappus
filifolius var. lugens) in bloom which Richard had never seen,
and other things like Indian ricegrass (Achnatherum
hymenoides), santolina pincushion (Chaenactis
santolinoides) and slender wildcabbage (Caulanthus
major var. major), the latter two in good bloom. We stopped
at a nice area under some pines where we found an amazing patch of white
lupines (maybe andersonii), a single Big Bear Valley phlox (Phlox
dolichantha), a fairly rare species, flax-leaved monardella
(Monardella linoides var. stricta),
and many of the beautiful bluish form of plain mariposa lilies (Calochortus
invenustus) that inhabits this eastern part of the Holcomb Valley.
We turned left on the 3N16 and headed west past Polique Canyon Road,
looking for the road where Bob had told us were the namas. Along the
way we saw some excellent displays of great red paintbrush (Castilleja
miniata var. miniata) and pine green-gentian (Swertia
neglecta). The road we were seeking, the 3N08, wasn't hard to
find and as directed we drove along it about 1/8 of a mile and parked
just as the road began to descend steeply. Over to the right in a heavily
vegetated stream channel we found a geranium which was new to me, California
geranium (Geranium californicum),
Rydberg's horkelia (Horkelia rydbergii)
and smooth scouring rush (Equisetum laevigatum). We walked down
the road and up over the next hill, a section deeply rutted and rocky
that I never would have even attempted to drive, and just where Bob
said they were next to the road was a gorgeous grouping of Nama rothrockii.
If I hadn't known what I was looking for, I doubt I would have guessed
that this was a Nama. It was curious that it seemed to be confined
to an area only about 20-30' in diameter. On the way back to the car
we saw San Bernardino ragwort (Senecio
bernardinus), Parish's bedstraw (Galium
parishii), woodland spurge (Euphorbia
palmeri), and a Tetradymia well past blooming that looked to
me like spineless horsebrush (T. canescens). Our last found in
that location was some Bear Valley milkvetch (Astragalus
lentiginosus var. sierrae) with its beautifully patterned bladdery
fruits and a few delicate blooms. Just before we got back to the car,
Richard stepped off the road looking first at a huge growth of some
kind of a fungus, and then at something else, and discovered a much
better, much larger patch of Nama than we had seen before. And
many of these plants were just coming into flower whereas the other
ones were on their way out.
We drove back on the 3N16 toward the Belleville Meadows area of the
Holcomb Valley where I had been several times before on botany field
trips. I was looking for California broom-rape (Orobanche
californica ssp. feudgei) which I had encountered there before
but never in very good shape. Where we parked the ground was covered
with sapphire woolstars (Eriastrum
sapphirinum). We walked over into the meadow area and started
looking around some sagebrush and rabbitbrush shrubs. I found the first
one, a diminutive plant whose main purpose was to demonstrate that they
were there and to give Richard a mental picture of what to look for.
Then I found another, and just as I spotted what looked like a really
good one, Richard found one that was in superb shape, absolutely prime
condition, so I photographed that. We puzzled over a mustard that I
was pretty sure was a Descurainia but I didn't know what species.
There was also a lot of Wheeler's cinquefoil (Potentilla
wheeleri) and silverleaf cinquefoil (P.
anserina ssp. anserina) in good bloom. We saw some other things
in the meadow like ashy-gray paintbrush (Castilleja
cinerea) and the tiniest slender phlox (Phlox
gracilis) I've ever seen, but by then the weather that had been
threatening seemed to be getting worse and we were hearing booms of
thunder to the east.
We had decided that we would head over to Green Canyon to see if we
could find some mountain maples (Acer glabrum) that we had found
on that trail once before but that I had never photographed, but by
the time we got over to that area it was raining pretty hard, so we
decided to leave that for another day. Basically it was another good
day of botanizing.
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Monday, 3 July 2006 (Green Canyon, San Bernardino Mts)
I drove up to Green Canyon this morning to search for the mountain maple,
but I didn't have a whole lot of time and only got about a mile up the
trail. I had been sure that the maple was toward the beginning of the
trail, but maybe it was farther up than I remembered because I couldn't
find it. Saw some beautiful blooms of American dogwood (Cornus sericea),
California false-indigo (Amorpha californica var. californica),
cow parsnip (Heracleum lanatum), slender wildcabbage (Caulanthus
major var. major), and a few other things, but it was really the maple
I had come for, and that apparently will have to wait for another time.
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Saturday, 8 July 2006 (Baldy Notch, San Gabriel Mts)
My daughter Gracie and I took the chairlift up to Baldy Notch today
to look for a plant that Jane Strong had told me about. Actually we
had tried to do on the 4th of July, but my car overheated and began
a process which eventually produced for me a new car, a Honda CR-V 4-wheel
drive, so this was its maiden outing. The plant I was looking for was
white-veined wintergreen (Pyrola
picta) in the heath family, a family which also includes madrones,
manzanitas, azaleas, huckleberries, prince's pines or pipsissewas, and
the non-photosynthetic species called pinedrops and snow plants. Jane
had given me specific directions to a particular junction of roads heading
down from the Notch and to a particular tree with a sign on it under
which Jane saw the wintergreen when she sat down to have her lunch.
We walked down the road and Gracie spotted the tree right away, but
it took me a couple of minutes to find the wintergreen because it was
very short. But it is a fascinating plant, and by holding the stems
a certain way I could take pictures looking right into the inflorescence
so that you can see what are called the anther tubes.
As I did with Miriam, I was able to point out to Gracie some snow plants,
and I also saw a lot of rock buckwheat (Eriogonum
saxatile) and clasping-leaved caulanthus (Caulanthus
amplexicaulis var. amplexicaulis). Gracie had fun climbing around
in a bulldozer that was parked down by the maintenance area, and then
we rode down on the chairlift.
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Monday, 10 July 2006 (Devils Slide Trail, San Jacinto Mts)
I arranged to meet Tom Chester at the Humber Park trailhead this morning
for what would be my second time up this particular trail, and although
this was Tom's first time in a couple of years, it was his (I think)
14th visit. I was anxious to confirm some of the things that I had seen
with Richard Sapiro on 29 June, clear up some things that I hadn't been
sure about, and possibly see those things which we hadn't been able
to find before. Tom was joined by his friend James Dillane who brought
a pair of amazing eyes to the hunt. The weather seemed a bit warmer
than the last time I was there, and Tom warned us that he might have
to go slowly since he hadn't done any higher altitude hiking for the
past couple of years.
At the very beginning of the trail I found a snow plant (Sarcodes
sanguinea) underneath a pine. We headed up the hill through
woods of canyon live oaks and black oaks, incense-cedars, white firs,
and jeffrey and sugar pines. The indian milkweed (Asclepias
eriocarpa) was in full bloom. When we got to the buckwheats
Richard and I had seen before, Tom said that they were not the San Jacinto
buckwheat (Eriogonum apiculatum) but rather the more common naked
buckwheat (Eriogonum nudum
var. pauciflorum). I guess I will have to wait for another time
when I can get up to Saddle Junction and then go on the PCT toward the
South Ridge trail, which I plan to do when we come back from France
in August. As we continued up the trail, Tom pointed out the differences
between greenleaf manzanita (Arctostaphylos patula) and pink-bracted
manzanita (Arctostaphylos pringlei ssp. drupacea), then we saw
the first San Bernardino rubber rabbitbrush (Chrysothamnus nauseosus
ssp. bernar-
dinus). We had already seen several pinedrops (Pterospora
andromedea) rising out of the pine needles, and then James spotted
a lovely clump of them hiding under a Ceanothus. From that point on
it seemed that we were seeing them everywhere, including some that were
several feet tall and others that were just pushing up out of the ground.
We looked at the plant that Tom had originally called Arabis ?
and confirmed that it was as we suspected a Streptanthus, then
studied some basal rosettes that were probably the same thing. I spotted
an unusual-looking white-veined wintergreen (Pyrola picta) that
had blooms but no leaves. We puzzled over that until we saw in the Jepson
Manual that this plant is sometimes ± leafless.
When we reached the first moist drainage from Jolley Spring, we searched
without success for the brittle fern (Cystopteris
fragilis), then spent a good deal of time on the monkeyflowers
there, which were pilosus, guttatus and floribundus.
I photographed Idaho bentgrass (Agrostis idahoensis), fragile
sheath sedge (Carex fracta) and long-leaved rush (Juncus macrophyllus),
then Tom pointed out the tiny Tiehm's rush (Juncus
tiehmii) and confirmed that what I had thought was brown-headed
rush (Juncus phaeocephalus var. paniculatus)
was indeed that species. In his guide Tom makes this interesting observation:
"The two taxa above make an interesting pair here; Carex fracta
is a rush-like Carex (from the inflorescence), and Juncus
phaeocephalus is a sedge-like Juncus (from the leaves)!"
We met a couple of wildlife biologists who were heading up the mountain
to do a survey of a possible flying squirrel population. I told them
about the rattlesnake with black coloration that Richard and I had seen,
and they filled us in that it was a Southern Pacific rattlesnake (Crotalus
viridis ssp. helleri), the common resident rattlesnake of these
mountains.
At the next drainage, the one from Powderbox Spring, there was a mass
of scarlet monkeyflower (Mimulus cardinalis) and some goldenrod
(Solidago californica). The forest goosefoot (Chenopodium
atrovirens) at that location turned out to be Fremont's goosefoot
(Chenopodium fremontii), but there were many of the former species
farther up the trail which was fortunate for me since I had never seen
it before. The thing that primarily discriminates these two species
is the ratio of length to width of the leaves. We crossed another drainage,
from Middle Spring, and then were surprised by the discovery of a tiny
pink-flowered Mimulus which Tom later keyed out as Brewer's monkeyflower
(Mimulus breweri). The
trail switchbacks right and left, crossing several drainages, passing
a beautiful stand of great red paintbrush (Castilleja
miniata ssp. miniata). At one of the drier drainages, I pointed
out the fern we had seen before and Tom agreed that it was Cystopteris
fragilis. There also we saw green miner's lettuce (Claytonia
parviflora ssp. viridis).
Higher up the trail we saw Parish's campion (Silene parishii),
wax currant (Ribes cereum var. cereum), musk monkeyflower (Mimulus
moschatus) and Tiling's monkeyflower (Mimulus tilingii),
hairy wood rush (Luzula comosa). As we were nearing the top of
the trail we saw a single spotted coralroot (Corallorhiza maculata),
then Tom pointed out the perennial rock-cress (Arabis perennans)
that I had missed last time. At a wonderful little seepy area in a shaded
section of woods, we found streambank lotus (Lotus oblongifolius
var. oblongifolius), long-anthered rush (Juncus
macrandrus), alpine pearlwort (Sagina
saginoides) and tinker's penny (Hypericum
anagalloides), the last three species being new for me.
When we got to Saddle Junction, we headed off on the PCT toward South
Ridge to show James the San Jacinto lupine (Lupinus
hyacinthinus) and to look for the Hulsea Richard and I had been
unable to find last time. Unfortunately it still had not put in an appearance,
so that along with the little prince's pine (Chimaphila menziesii)
had still eluded us. But there's always a next time, and we'll find
them sooner or later. After having a bite to eat, we headed back down,
reaching the parking lot just as it was getting dark.
NOTE: I have made a special page about the many monkeyflower species
of this trail which may be accessed here.
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Friday, 14 July 2006 (Palo Comado Canyon, Santa Monica Mts)
Today I walked into Palo Comado Canyon from Doubletree Avenue off of
Kanan Road. It is about 0.4 miles to the Palo Comado Canyon trail. It
was very hot and very dry. I was there because Jay Sullivan had told
me that a species I was looking for was in bloom, the non-native skeletonweed
(Chondrilla juncea). Once you
reach the Palo Comado trail itself, you can go about 0.1 mile to the
right to reach the Ranch Connector trail which goes over some hills
and eventually meets the Sulphur Springs trail in Chesebro Canyon. If
you go to the left, the trail goes either to China Flats or to the Sheep
Corral at the top of Chesebro Canyon. I started walking north and in
about a half-mile saw the first skeletonweed with a bright yellow flower.
Many of the plants I saw had flowers already in seed, but there were
enough flowers to get some good photographs. It was too hot to do much
of anything else, so since I had gotten what I came for I went home.
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Saturday, 15 July 2006 (Pebble Plains, San Bernardino Mts)
Today was an interesting day. First I was able to get a plant in bloom
that I had seen a couple of times before not in flower and then I had
a serious senior moment. To begin, I drove up to Big Bear on the 330,
passing a steady stream of traffic coming down the mountain. It made
me think that there was some kind of an evacuation going on because
of the Sawtooth Fire which has been raging out by Yucca Valley and Pioneertown,
but then if there had been I didn't think they would still be letting
traffic go up the mountain. For a while Big Bear, which is only about
eight miles from the fire, appeared to be threatened but then the fire
took off in a different direction. I still don't know why there was
so much traffic coming down the mountain.
My first destination was a little peninsula that juts into the south
side of Big Bear Lake called Eagle Point. There is a meadow there that
is part of the Big Bear Valley Preserve, and one of the plants that
grows there is called alternatively cottony clay-flower, plantain goldenweed,
Bear Valley haplopappus (because it did use to be in that genus) or
Bear Valley pyrrocoma (Pyrrocoma
uniflora var. gossypina). I don't know where these names come
from, but the latter seems the most appropriate to me and is the that
one I use. I walked across the meadow and began searching for the Pyrrocoma.
It wasn't hard to find the plants but I was chagrined at first to see
only basal rosettes. Then I saw a few plants with nice flowering stems
but no flowers. I had just about reconciled myself to the idea that
I would have to return later in the summer, when I spotted an open yellow
flower, then a half dozen or so more. The Jepson Manual describes this
species as rare, inhabiting an area of the San Bernardinos near Big
Bear Lake, which is just where I was. It grows to about 38 cm tall and
the herbage is very woolly-tomentose. I got my photographs and headed
on. Thanks by the way to Tim Krantz for refreshing my memory as to exactly
where this location was.
I drove over the Stanfield Cut-off and then up Polique Canyon Road.
I needed to find a location along forest road 3N12 where a botany acquaintance
in May had photographed a plant and put a picture of it on the Calphotos
website, and this is where the senior moment came in. The plant was
identified by her as Senecio ionophyllus and I wanted to try
to find it. She had sent me a picture she took of the road from the
approximate location of the plant so I had no difficulty finding the
right spot. There was a beautiful dryish-looking meadow on one side
and a bit of pebbly-plain area on the other. I walked along the fence
line looking carefully at the base of each fence post where she said
she'd seen the plant and the only one I thought might fit the bill looked
to me like Senecio bernardinus. Based on my belief that there
is never only one of something in a particular place, I climbed through
the fence and scoured the area, finding in the process some lovely condensed
phlox (Phlox condensata), ashy-gray
paintbrush (Castilleja cinerea),
Bear Valley sandwort (Arenaria
ursina), Parry's rabbitbrush (Chrysothamnus
parryi var. asper), showy Brewer's lupine (Lupinus
breweri var. grandiflorus), plain Mariposa lilies (Calochortus
invenustus), sulphur-flowered buckwheats (Eriogonum umbellatum
var. ?) and more Tehachapi ragworts (Senecio
bernardinus). By this time I had pretty well decided that my
friend had been incorrect in the identification (ionophyllus
and bernardinus are very close and are next to each other in
the keys), but I was somewhat dis-
appointed that I wasn't going to get the one I was looking for. Later
in the day, when I got home I was looking at her photo again, and I
noticed something I had overlooked before, several leaves with toothed
apical margins, something that is very characteristic of S. bernardinus.
This convinced me even further that her ID was not right. Then I googled
images of Senecio ionophyllus to see if anyone else had any pictures
of it, and the only two pictures of it that came up were mine! I finally
remembered having seen this species at at least two different locations
in the San Gabriels Mts, where it is more common than in the San Bernardinos,
and I felt totally stupid. I don't know if it really was a senior moment
or more a function of the fact that I have almost 2,000 taxa now in
my website and I just can't remember everything I have or don't have.
There are so many names flying around in my head that I sometimes think
I'm forgetting as many as I'm learning.
Later I spent a couple of hours at the Belleville (spelled for some
reason on the sign there as Bellevill) Meadows area along an area of
the 3N16 known as the Gold Fever Trail, so called because it was a hotbed
of mining activity during the gold rush of the 1860's. Many of the local
names still in existence like Van Dusen Canyon (after Jed Van Dusen),
Belleville Meadow (after Belle Van Dusen) and Holcomb Valley (after
Bill Holcomb) harken back to that fascinating period of our local history.
I collected a sample of the mustard that Richard and I had puzzled over
on 2 July to send to Tom for identification, looked without success
for yet another rare species, Thelypodium stenopetalum, and then
headed home.
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Wednesday, 19 July 2006 (Devils Slide Trail, San Jacinto Mts)
Today I drove down to the San Jacintos for the third time in as many
weeks. Tom had spotted a little prince's pine (Chimaphila
menziesii) in bloom 2.26 miles up the trail on his last excursion
a few days ago and I wanted to photograph that. Also, on our last visit
to this trail we had talked about the ssp. of Galium angustifolium
that can sometimes be found here, and Tom had sent me voucher information
about places to look for it, one of which was around Lake Fulmor on
Highway 243 between Banning and Idyllwild which is the road I take to
get there. So I stopped there and walked in on the road that leads past
the little lake to the James Reserve, which is part of an extensive
system of reserves managed by the University of California. Unfortunately
for me today, you can only get into the James Reserve by permission
(I was in there once on a botany field trip organized by Rancho Santa
Ana Botanic Garden) so I thought I would likely not find the Galium.
I had seen a bunch of Galium angustifolium ssp. angustifolium
in several places along the road where I stopped on the way up, and
I had seen many more in the woods just as I walked in toward the Reserve.
They were good-
sized shrubby plants, multi-stemmed and intricately branched,
with many-flowered inflorescences and leaves that were mostly very short,
only about 10-15 mm. The ones I was trying to find had been described
by Tom as depauperate in appearance with much longer leaves, not very
branched, and with few flowers, but I still had no mental picture to
apply to the search. So it was with total elation and surprise that
when I happened to put my backpack down to get something out of it,
there right next to it was this little plant about 20 cm tall, obviously
a Galium, with only a few fruits on it and very long narrow leaves.
I began looking around and realized that I had walked right past a major
population of these bedstraws which were so inconspicuous that I had
failed to see them, but now that I had a better mental image of them
I started seeing them all over. For the most part they were single-stemmed,
none of them more than 30 cm tall, and all with few fruits in open inflorescences
and very long leaves that were completely different from the shrubbier
taxa. I even found a few that were still in good bloom, so I was fairly
sure that this was the San Jacinto Mountains bedstraw (Galium
angustifolium ssp. jacinticum). What a great stroke of luck!
I collected a sample to confirm the identification with Tom. When we
got together at the ranger station, I showed him the sample and he was
pretty sure as well that it was that taxa.
Standing by our cars in the parking lot at Humber Park, James Dillane
pointed out a mistletoe on an incense-cedar (Calocedrus decurrens)
and we realized that Tom did not have it on his plant guide. It was
incense-cedar mistletoe (Phoradendron
libocedri) and since I had never seen it before, this was my
first opportunity to photograph it. All we had to do was find some on
an incense-cedar on the trail, and we almost immediately found some
on a tree just a bit offtrail. Except for down near the parking lot
and up near Saddle Junction, the trail for some reason is almost devoid
of incense-cedars. As we hiked up the trail, Tom told us about his investigations
into the differently-appearing forms of Rhamnus that he had been
seeing, forms of R. californica and R. tomentella that
were so variable and intermixed throughout their range that he suspects
that they should not be considered as separate taxa. We had intensively
botanized this trail several times recently so we were able to move
along at a pretty good pace to the first drainage where there was a
grass species that I wanted to photograph, slender hair-grass (Deschampsia
elongata). It was not very exciting just a basal clump of leaves
and a long, slender flowering stem about 20 cm tall hiding at the moist
base of a boulder.
After that we kept going, mostly checking things that were already on
the guide, and Tom keeping track of how many species were in bloom.
The little Brewer's monkeyflowers (Mimulus
breweri) were not doing so well where we had seen them last
time, but maybe it was just their time to be finished. The San Jacinto
Mountains keckiella was in much better bloom than I had seen it before,
and the Parish's catchfly (Silene
parishii) and shaggy hawkweed (Hieracium
horridum) blooms were nicely open. We found the one little prince's
pine (Chimaphila menziesii) hiding under the edge of a boulder,
and I was amazed that Tom had ever spotted it in the first place. Regrettably,
it was not in the best shape, so I will continue to look for better
examples of this interesting flower. We found some southern monardella
(Monardella australis)
and then reached the point where we had seen the tinker's penny (Hypericum
anagalloides) and the alpine pearlwort (Sagina
saginoides), which was I had decided as far as I was going to
go today. The tinker's penny was in much better condition, the blooms
more orange and open, and James managed to find a single bloom of the
pearlwort. As tiny as the head of a pin and yet I was lucky enough to
be able to get a fairly decent picture of it. Offtrail on the right
there were some white flowers that Tom thought were yarrow, but when
we went down to see, although some were yarrow, there was also Parish's
yampah (Perideridia parishii ssp. parishii).
I stopped to have something to eat and Tom and James continued on up
the trail to further investigate the Willow Creek Trail. I will have
to wait for Tom's next report to find out what treasures they might
have found. I felt very fortunate to be able to hike in the company
of such knowledgeable and friendly souls.
As an aside, somewhere along the trail the subject of Mt. Baden-Powell
came and how the name should be correctly pronounced. I had gotten into
the habit of saying it "bah-den"-"powell," possibly
because of the town in Germany called Baden-Baden ("bah-den"-"bah-den"),
but both Tom and James said that they thought it was pronounced "bay-den"-"powell."
Now I'm one of those people who has to investigate these kinds of matters
and resolve them, so I turned to the usually reliable internet and it
turns out curiously enough that we were all wrong. A humorous little
verse penned by Robert Baden-Powell himself goes as follows:
"Man,
Nation, Maiden
Please
call it Baden.
Further,
for Powell
Rhyme
it with Noel."
But, as Tom later pointed out to me, "Places are pronounced in
geography the way the LOCALS pronounce them, regardless of whether they
were named for someone or something else. For example, 'New Madrid,
Missouri' is pronounced 'New MAD-rid', not 'New Mah-DRID', the way the
Spanish town is pronounced, because that is the way the people who live
there pronounce it." And we have a street in Sierra Madre that
our local residents pronounce as "LIE-ma" not as "LEE-ma."
Apparently the common pronunciation of the mountain is "BAY-den
POW-ell," so I will stop trying to get my mouth around that other
awkward pronunciation. Thanks, Tom, for saving me from that obligation.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, 22 July 2006 (Mt. San Antonio, San Gabriel Mts)
On a day when the temperatures in some inland valleys were predicted
to go as high as 115° (and later this was actually announced on
the news as possibly the hottest day ever recorded in Los Angeles),
Richard Sapiro and I joined Cliff and Gabi McLean, Candy Byers and Mickey
Long for a hike to the summit of Mt. San Antonio, better known as Mt.
Baldy. We rode up the chairlift and set out around 9 am, and with the
sun out it was pretty warm even at the elevation of 7775'. The beginning
of the trail is a hard slog up a steep slope. We found ourselves taking
advantage of rest stops to study some of the plants like woolly mountain
parsley (Oreonana vestita), beaked penstemon (Penstemon rostriflorus),
California fuchsia (Epilobium canum ssp. latifolium) and various
buckwheats such as Davidson's (Eriogonum davidsonii), rock (E.
saxatile), alpine sulpher-flowered (E. umbellatum var. minus)
and Wright's (E. wrightii var. subscaposum). The Notch and surrounding
areas were awash in the beautiful giant blazing star (Mentzelia
laevicaulis), one of the most dramatic wildflowers of our mountain
areas. Soon bush chinquapin (Chrysolepis sempervirens) began
lining the trail, covered both with lush spikes of flowers and spiny
seedpods.
The trail began to flatten out and we crossed the Devil's Backbone.
There was a pleasant breeze that was especially enjoyable when we could
stop in the shade of a pine tree, of which there were limber (Pinus
flexilis), lodgepole (P. contorta ssp. murrayana), jeffrey
(P. jeffreyi) and sugar (P. lambertiana). We began to
encounter two shrubby species whose bloom was pretty much done, smoothleaf
yerba santa (Eriodictyon trichocalyx var. trichocalyx)
and small-leaved creambush or mountain spray (Holodiscus
microphyllus var. microphyllus). Later and higher there would
be plenty of both in prime blooming condition. Everywhere there was
curl-leaf mountain mahogany (Cercocarpus ledifolius var. intermontanus)
beginning to produce its feathery curlique achenes. Off to one side
we spotted a patch of gray monardellas (Monardella
cinerea). I don't know where this name came from because they
don't look gray to me at all. The small wavy-edged leaves are a dull
green, the bracts are a dark reddish-purple, and the corollas are rose-colored.
Later we would see a tremendous bloom of this species on the barren
rocky hillsides going across the summit ridge. We also spotted a single
Parish's catchfly (Silene parishii).
Mickey spotted an extremely interesting plant, California ground cone
(Boschniakia strobilacea),
which I had only seen once before out on Santa Rosa Island in May of
this year, then I noticed some leaves up on a bank that I thought was
possibly a Streptanthus at first, but then when I saw the fruits the
identification came to me, showy cycladenia (Cycladenia
humilis var. venusta), although I couldn't quite get the name
out until I got home. And it was in bloom! The only other place I've
ever seen this was near the top on Mt. Baden-Powell. Then someone spotted
an Arabis which I'm pretty sure was broad-seeded rock-cress (Arabis
platysperma), and Mickey's sharp eyes noticed an onion. We had
been seeing the dried inflorescences of them all along the trail but
this was the first one in bloom, and then there were quite a few of
them hiding among the rocks. We tentatively identified it as San Bernardino
mountain onion (Allium
monticola). Also hiding among the rocks were a couple of Johnston's
monkeyflowers (Mimulus johnstonii),
which is a small but spectacularly beautiful flower.
As we drew ever closer to Mt. Baldy itself, dark clouds began gathering
over the summit and a few rumbles of thunder could be heard in the distance.
The sun was now blocked and the temperature went down significantly,
something that none of us regretted. Mickey spotted a little green flowering
plant that appeared to be a member of the Asteraceae family. I couldn't
place it at all except that the flower looked like a Hieracium
to me because it was all ligulate and didn't appear to fully open, but
the rest of the plant was obviously not any of the three Hieracium
species we have in Southern California. Mickey eventually suggested
a Crepis, which I thought was a definite possibility because
I had never seen Crepis anywhere except in the Sierras. We collected
samples and I took some photographs of it. Later at home, based on Mickey's
suggestion, it only took a few minutes to come up with the correct identification,
dwarf hawksbeard (Crepis nana).
And my idea of Hieracium was not completely out to lunch because
Hieracium and Crepis are closely related genera.
On the final series of uphill switchbacks leading to the summit, we
saw a lovely Heuchera in bloom, but unfortunately I didn't collect a sample so am unable to say for sure what it
was. Maybe I'll be able to tell from my pictures. About 1/4 mile below the summit, we heard a loud clap of thunder and
saw some lightning flashes, and so we decided that the prudent thing
to do would be to not be on top of Baldy in a thunderstorm. We turned
around and headed back down, noticing for the first time a plume of
smoke rising from a fire that apparently had just started over by the
I-15 and highway 138. We stopped and had lunch and then continued back
to the Notch with ash from the fire falling around us. All in all it
had been an excellent outing, not too bad weather, some terrific finds,
and good company. The outside temperature was 89° on my car thermometer
when we left the parking area, and hit 110° on the freeway going
home! I think we made a good choice to be where we went.
Day after tomorrow I'm leaving for France, so this will be my final
field trip report for July.
NOTE: the Heuchera turned out to be an Abrams' alumroot (H.
abramsii), a rare species that inhabits the Baldy summit area.
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