The snow melt gullies along the Angeles Crest Highway in the eastern part of the San Gabriel Mts are one of the best floristic locations in our local area, and although the snow melted much earlier this year and the overall rainfall distribution was less productive than last year, still there is a great diversity of species to be found there. In 1980 and 1981 Wayne Sawyer conducted a floral survey of the Lily Springs area, bordered basically on the north by the Angeles Crest Highway, on the south by the Pacific Crest Trail, and extending to Windy Gap and Little Jimmy Springs on the west and Lily Springs on the east. For the past two years volunteers of the San Gabriel Mountains Chapter of CNPS led by Jane Tirrell and Walt Fidler have been attempting to replicate Sawyer's survey and study the phenology of well over a hundred plant species, some of which are quite rare in the area. The elevation ranges from 7000 to 8400' and the survey area is accessible either up steep, rocky slopes from the ACH or on hiking trails either from Dawson Saddle or Islip Saddle. My last visit to this area was in July of 2009. On this occasion I joined up with Jane and Walt, Tom Chester, Jane Strong and Pam Pallette, and we botanized along the highway at the base of the gully at mile marker 67.7 and up through the gully to the drier forest a thousand feet or so higher up. I returned a few days later and the species I photographed on that visit will be in Lily Springs Part Two. For more information on the survey, click
here. The symbol ^ indicates a taxon that was new to me when I photographed it on this field trip, and an asterisk indicates a non-native species.
