I have had on my calender for several weeks a hike around the backside of Mt. Waterman to a place called Incense Cedar Meadow. I'm not sure if I have ever walked this trail before, but loving meadows as I do, the prospect of visiting a meadow that was new to me was exciting. The group I joined was a Sierra Club Natural Science Section group led by Ginny Heringer and Carole Scurlock. It is about 7-3/4 miles round trip to do this hike from the Three Points parking area on Little Rock Creek Road just off the Angeles Crest Highway, with about 1,500' elevation gain. If you continue farther along this trail you can get to Twin Peaks and the summit of Mt. Waterman. As it turned out, the 'meadow' we arrived at was more of a San Gabriels 'meadow' than a San Bernardinos meadow, that is, it was a woodsy bracken field, but there was a seepy area nearby with some special plants. Along the course of the trail we found three rare species in bloom, Linanthus concinnus, Mimulus johnstonii, and Hulsea vestita ssp. gabrielensis, and I found a fourth, Triteleia lugens, in a semi-dry stream channel just below where we stopped to turn around, and a fifth, Galium jepsonii, along the trail on the way back. Not bad for a year that had looked like it was going to be dry as a bone. There were numerous lemon lilies in the seepy area, but they had not started blooming yet. It was another beautiful day in the mountains.

Yarrow
Achillea millefolium
Asteraceae

Lemon lily
Lilium parryi
Liliaceae

Western morning glory
Calystegia occidentalis var. fulcrata
Convolvulaceae

Western wallflower
Erysimum capitatum var. capitatum
Brassicaceae

Bigelow's sneezeweed
Helenium bigelovii
Asteraceae
[Named for John Milton Bigelow. 1904-1878]

Columbine
Aquilegia formosa
Ranunculaceae