The other day I realized with some surprise that it had been four years since I had visited the Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Preserve, a place that I had made many trips to back in 2005 and 2006, and a place that I particularly love. Tom Chester was planning a photography outing to supplement his own pictures of Santa Rosa Plateau flora, and to help Marsha Hanson find some species to fill out the collection of wildflower photos that she is compiling for a series of Visitor Center binders. The 9,000 acres of the Plateau are located off Clinton Keith Road near the city of Murrieta at the southern end of the Santa Ana Mountains in southwest Riverside County, and consist of grasslands, chaparral, and sage scrub with some very special habits such as Engelmann oak woodlands and vernal pools. I thought this was an excellent opportunity for me to renew my acquaintance with the Plateau and do a photo gallery for a place that is near and dear to my heart. I went back again a few days later to try to get some photographs of the Microseris douglasii of which there were none open on the first trip. The keys say 'nodding in bud,' but most of the nodding buds we saw had already produced ligules without the buds having opened. It had been late in the day when we were there, so I thought possibly in the morning I would find open flowers. I was able to find only a few flowers that were open. I collected some buds and put them in water at home, but they opened directly to fruit. It's an odd species that can be self-pollinating and apparently often just doesn't have an open flower. An asterisk next to the common name indicates a non-native species, of which there are an unfortunate number at the Plateau, partly as a result of its ranching history, but especially near trailheads and roads.

California poppy
Eschscholzia californica
Papaveraceae
[Named for Johann Friedrich Gustav von Eschscholtz, 1793-1831]

Spotted downingia
Downingia bella
Campanulaceae
[Named for Andrew Jackson Downing, 1815-1852]

Engelmann oak
Quercus engelmannii
Fagaceae
[Named for George Engelmann, 1809-1884]

Water crowfoot
Ranunculus aquatilis var. capillaceus
Ranunculaceae

Western buttercup
Ranunculus occidentalis
Ranunculaceae

Purslane speedwell
Veronica peregrina ssp. xalapensis
Plantaginaceae