This is a photo gallery made 20 years after my first visit to the Bristlecone Pine Forest. Back in 2002 when I was just beginning my explorations of southern California botanical locations, I made a trip up to see the bristlecone pines in the White Mountains above Bishop where I camped for a couple of nights. At this juncture I can't recall with any certainty whether it was a good year for rainfall or not but that area does tend to be pretty dry in most years, nevertheless I saw a few interesting plants and enjoyed wandering about among the ancient bristlecones. These gnarled and statuesque trees some of which exceed 4000 years in age are dotted around the landscape like lone sentinels, their altitudinal range being somewhere between 9000' and 11000'. The bristlecones have adapted to a fairly harsh environment, often withstanding gale force winds, with soil consisting of a whitish alkaline form of limestone called dolomite, and precipitation amounting to 20" or less per year mainly in the form of winter snow. Although native Americans were no doubt aware of these trees, the first western researcher to notice them was a dendrochronologist named Edmund Schulman in 1953, and his work has been memorialized in the grove named for him. The oldest of the bristlecones is perhaps the Methuselah at around 4,800 years old. To get to the Visitor Center at Schulman Grove, you drive Highway 395 some 15 miles from Bishop, turning left onto SR 168 East for 13 miles, and left again on White Mountain Road for another ten miles. During this trip I camped at Grandview Campground and one of the things I did was to hike to the top of White Mountain Peak at 14,252', a 14-mile roundtrip which did not particularly affect my ability to breath but did give me a headache. In 2008 an arsonist set fire to the Visitor Center and it was burned but has since been rebuilt. This gallery is a fairly short one because in truth I didn't see that many plants and wasn't doing as much photography back then as I do now. Also I was far less knowledgeable then about plant species than I am now, so identifications given here may be suspect. Feel free to suggest any changes. Next year I plan on making a return trip to this area.

Alpine gold hulsea
Hulsea algida
Asteraceae
[Named for Gilbert White Hulse, 1807-1883]

Basin butterweed
Packera multilobata
Asteraceae
[Named for John George Packer, 1929-2019]

Whorlflower penstemon
Penstemon heterodoxus var. heterodoxus
Plantaginaceae

Utah juniper
Juniperus osteosperma
Cupressaceae

Curl-leaf mountain mahogany
Cercocarpus ledifolius var. intermontanus
Rosaceae