This week I joined a group including Wayne Armstrong, Kate Harper, Mike Crouse, Vince Balch, Steve Fuller, James Dillane and Tom Chester, to botanize part of the Bisnaga Alta Wash area on the western side of Anza Borrego Desert State Park. This area is near the Vallecito Mountains and accessed from the S-2 approximately 20 miles south of Scissors Crossing. Our main goal on this field trip was to find Lotus haydonii, a species we have never found for sure before but which has been vouchered from here. The terrain of the Bisnaga Alta Wash is actually a series of fairly deep washes with the areas between them absolutely covered with jumping cholla that makes it necessary to step carefully. Even so we were constantly brushing cholla segments from our boots and pants, and sometimes skin. To the east and west are other rocky washes similarly incised with multiple channels. It is not clear exactly where the voucher, recorded by Duffie Clemons in 1982, was from, and in any case we did not find any, but we did find Horsfordia alata which has been vouchered only once in San Diego County, by Jon Rebman in 2006. In this location as with the others I have visited so far this year the flora such as it is is the result of rains last fall, and this mini season is drawing to a close. Without more rain very quickly the deserts will not have much of a bloom this year. Incidentally, Bisnaga was a genus name for barrel cacti published by Orcutt in 1926 which has been replaced by Ferocactus, and is sometimes given as a common name for the barrel cactus. An upside-down V next to the common name indicates a species that was new to me when I photographed it on this field trip, and an asterisk denotes a non-native taxon.

Spectacle pod
Dithyrea californica
Brassicaceae

Redroot or Smallflower cryptantha
Cryptantha micrantha
Boraginaceae

Pale primrose
Camissoniopsis pallida ssp. pallida
Onagraceae
[Named for Ludolf Karl Adelbert von Chamisso, 1781-1838]

Desert pincushion
Chaenactis stevioides
Asteraceae

Narrow-leaved cryptantha
Cryptantha angustifolia
Boraginaceae

Peirson's brown-eyed primrose
Chylismia claviformis ssp. peirsonii
Onagraceae
[Named for Frank Warrington Peirson, 1865-1951]

Little gold poppy
Eschscholzia minutiflora
Papaveraceae
[Named for Johann Friedrich Gustav von Eschscholtz, 1793-1831]