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IN THE FIELD: Corte Madera Mountain

By Tom Oberbauer

Back in January of 1978, I hiked up onto Corte Madera Mountain with a friend, Tom Scott (now with UC Berkeley and UC Riverside), who had been studying Golden Eagles in San Diego County. Bald Eagles were wintering at Corte Madera Lake. After postponing the hike due to rain, that was a good rain season, we drove out to Corte Madera Lake, which was accessible because Tom Scott had a key, and we hiked up the north side of Corte Madera Mountain on a little used trail. The trail climbed through a woodland of mostly coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia), but also Coulter pine (Pinus coulteri), as well as Jeffrey pine (Pinus jeffreyi). It was foggy going up and the view was obscured.

IN THE FIELD: Corte Madera Mountain
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In The Field: The New Santa Fe Valley Trail

By Jürgen Schrenk

Recently, the new Santa Fe Valley Trail, connecting the San Dieguito River Park’s Del Dios Gorge Trail with the Lusardi Creek Preserve, was opened to the public. The beginning of the trail took us through fields of Menzies’ Goldenbush (Isocoma menziesii var. menziesii).

In The Field: The New Santa Fe Valley Trail
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The Desert a Month after Monsoonal Rains

By Jürgen Schrenk

After yet another week of waiting for the temps to go down watching our Monarch production and limiting our walks to local parks, I was worried that I might completely miss the monsoonal “spring” in the desert. So, I went on a quick drive along S-2

The Desert a Month after Monsoonal Rains
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CNPS-SD Helps With Rare Plant Surveys

By Justin Daniel, Vice President, Rare Plants Co-chair

With vaccinations allowing more contact outdoors and a workload a year behind, it's been a busy time a few of us to help some of our fantastic environmental conservancy organizations around San Diego County by assisting them in their rare plant surveys. The following are glimpses into some of the recent surveys. Come along for the ride and reach out to support our partners, too!

CNPS-SD Helps With Rare Plant Surveys
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The Mount Laguna Surprise

By Tom Oberbauer

…The next week, I drove up and hiked to the location I visited in December and sure enough, the display of Platystemon californica (above) was pretty amazing. Sheets of color extended across the slopes leading into the center of the meadow. I spent some time attempting to photograph and create video of the breeze gently shaking the small flowers. From this location, the view of the meadow ranges across its full length, extending more than three miles in the distance to the south. Laguna Lake also contained a good level of water reflecting the blue sky, apparently left over from the previous two good rainfall seasons. I attempted to capture the view of the flowers with the lake and end of the meadow in the distance. The breeze and the movement of the flowers in this manner always reminds me of when I was a child and my family visited Estes Park in Colorado and we observed alpine wildflowers…

The Mount Laguna Surprise

Quercus dumosa

Not in The Teens Anymore

By Frank Landis, CNPS-San Diego Conservation Committee Chair

As I’m writing this, everything relates to Covid-19 and we’re already tired of reading about it. I suspect it will be the same when this comes out. Hope you’re staying safe and sane.

Switching gears, I’m still dealing with conservation issues. One of the frustrating parts of this job is that projects inevitably are sent through at inconvenient times, just to make it harder to oppose them. Thus it is that Otay Ranch Village 13 went to the County Planning Commission on April 17, with notice given and documents posted a few days before Easter. Since I’m writing this April 15, I can only speculate that, despite overwhelming testimony against it, it will pass 5-1 or perhaps 4-2 and head to the Board of Supervisors. Why? Every General Plan Amendment (GPA) Project in the last few years has followed this pattern.

This one is botanically odious because of the scrub oaks. They want to wipe out 6.2 acres of scrub oak chaparral, an estimated 1,200 scrub oaks. In their original draft EIR they said that they looked like the rare Nuttall’s scrub oak (Quercus dumosa), but since the Jepson Manual said that species only grows within sight of the ocean, that couldn’t be it, it must be the more common Quercus berberidifolia. I went online, looked at where Nuttall’s scrub oak has been found, and found that no, the project is within the physical range of the Nuttall’s scrub oak. In the final EIR I was surprised to find that they agreed with me and changed the designation. However, they labeled it an “atypical population” and declared without further evidence that bulldozing these 1,200 rare oaks without mitigation was therefore an insignificant impact.