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.
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).
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
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!
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…
By Frank Landis, Chair Conservation Committee
I'm writing right after the October plant sale, and you will be probably reading this in early November. So why the Halloween theme? Here are four projects I'm dealing with, or will be dealing with soon. I'll let you figure out whether we're getting tricked or properly treated with.
By Frank Landis, Chairperson, Conservation Committee
Probably I should be writing an article about the virtues of planting large numbers of plants from the plant sale—which you should—but at the Chapter Council last Saturday, Greg Suba handed me a copy of “A Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment of California's Terrestrial Vegetation,” a document written in 2016 by James Thorne et al. of UC Davis for CDFW. And, unfortunately for you, I've been reading this, rather than thinking about how to persuade you that gardens are one way for plants to migrate to avoid climate change. So, my apologies, you're going to get a semi-review of a document you're likely to never read. But it will be interesting nonetheless. I hope.
The Groundwork EarthLab Education and Climate Action Center is a 4-acre site adjacent to Millennial Tech Middle School, at the junction of Euclid Ave and Highway 94. EarthLab is the creation of GroundWorks San Diego, a not-for-profit organization founded to teach San Diego children and their families how we can all enhance the earth’s ability to nurture life. CNPS-SD member Bruce Hanson helped found the organization in 2010.
EarthLab is divided into realms of the benign human/nature interfaces. A half-acre is growing organic crops. Another half-acre is a nursery for native plants used for canyon restoration projects. A small creek is cared for as a linkage for wildlife living in the Chollas Creek watershed. UCSD students have aquaculture and solar energy outdoor teaching labs in another area. And a quarter- acre has ornamental gardens with low-water plants. As this neighborhood is modified the Demo Gardens will be open to a walking route connecting North and South Encanto/Webster neighborhoods. Its mission is to become a beautiful site for teaching people how to have their own backyard native plant habitats and fruit trees for their own tables.
Mid-spring this year, grants from the US Fish and Wildlife Service and a $500 CNPS San Diego mini-grant awarded in 2016 bought native and drought-tolerant non-native plants. Volunteers from the US Navy, Coast Guard, and the community, and fifth-graders from local schools, planted a large portion of four gardens plans that were designed by CNPS-SD chapter members Scott Jones, David Clarke, Connie Beck, and Kay Stewart.
This month, October, the organizers will host a second planting party to infill areas that were left unplanted last spring. The organizers were granted a second $500 mini-grant by CNPS-SD to buy the native plants. On Saturday, October 28, 2017, 8:30 to noon, come join other volunteers to give these plants a great start in the EarthLab.
To learn more about this project, to volunteer, and to make donations or otherwise participate to support its work, see: http://groundworksandiego.org/.
By Frank Landis, Chairperson, Conservation Committee
I'm still mulling over the issue of plant migration, and since I'm writing this in the middle of August as a break from working on the Newland Sierra EIR, I figured it was worth a column combining the two. This may get messy.
By Tom Oberbauer, Vice President CNPS-San Diego
The Jamul Mountains are not as well recognized as some of their nearby neighbors. They are over-shadowed by Otay Mountain at 3,500 feet and San Miguel Mountain at 2,567 feet since they top out at 2,059 feet at the highest point. The Jamul Mountain stand between SR-94 as it passes through the southern part of Jamul, and Proctor Valley. Proctor Valley is notorious for the strange events that are purported to have occurred there: Proctor Valley monster and two headed cows; remnants of rumors from my youth growing up in the vicinity. Like San Miguel and Otay Mountains, the Jamul Mountains are composed of metavolcanic rock. This is volcanic rock that was deposited as part of a group of very tall mountains like the Andes, but in an island arc off the west coast of North America 106-108 million years ago (Kimbrough, 2014). Since I last climbed the Jamul Mountains in the late 1970’s, many things have changed including the fact that a large part of the surrounding land has been preserved, a steel barrier has been constructed to prevent OHV and trucks from driving cross-country over the slopes, and major fires have occurred.
I set out on an overcast morning, overcast where I live, but clear and sunny by the time I reached Proctor Valley. The temperature of the day was predicted to be in the mid 90’s. I drove down Proctor Valley Road and could see that some things have not changed, especially the washboard surface and the debris from target shooting along the side of the road. I parked my vehicle near a lone Eucalyptus tree and set off toward the peak.
By Frank Landis, Chairperson Conservation Committee
As you read this, I'll be working on a comment letter for the Newland Sierra EIR. That project inspired this essay because one of the things they're doing is trying to make the Newland Sierra development carbon neutral. This is a wonderful aspiration, but I'm not so sure that it shows up in the project design, and that's the subject of this month's essay. Unfortunately, carbon neutral developments aren't as simple as writing a few pages in an EIR and specifying that it should be possible to mount solar panels on otherwise conventional tract houses in a conventional development.
By Tom Oberbauer, Vice President, CNPS-SD
I drove out east on I-8 fairly early in the morning. The sky was heavily clouded to the point that mist was falling and it was necessary to use the windshield wipers. However, east of Alpine, the sun burst through and the sky was perfectly clear with no hint of a cloud. I was working on another rare plant survey to identify locations of Packera ganderi (Gander’s butterweed) and any other rare plants for the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) under their contract with AECOM. I drove east toward the town of Guatay and onto the Old Highway 80, the old concrete slab two lane highway with that characteristic bumpety-bump sound from the tires hitting the tar-filled slab joints across the road. I remember when this was the only road east, before I-8 was constructed. I needed to find a place to park and I first thought about parking at the Lutheran church parking area in the town and then I thought I would try the road through the village of Guatay to where it looked like a trail took off, a trail I had seen on Google Earth. However, a few dozen yards down the road there were signs on both sides of the road that stated unauthorized vehicles will be towed at the owner’s expense. Not only that, directly adjacent to that area was a towing service yard with an active tow truck; by active, I mean that the engine was running.
By Frank Landis, Chairperson Conservation Committee
On June 10, the state CNPS Chapter Council passed the following position statement:
"Climate is a significant factor effecting natural ecosystems, including California flora.
"CNPS recognizes that climate change is real and that the current rate of global warming is faster than nonhuman natural forces would produce. Based on overwhelming evidence and broad scientific consensus, we hold that human actions, including greenhouse gas emissions, are major contributors to local and global climate change. This recognition follows the work of world leading institutions and organizations, including the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United States National Academy of Sciences, and the American Geophysical Union. CNPS recognizes that climate change is a current and future stress on California's native flora, especially when added to other human activities, including habitat loss, introduction of non-native species, and blocking landscape linkages.
"CNPS supports science-based, rational policies and actions, on the local, state, national, and international levels, that lead to the reduction of greenhouse gases without endangering California's native flora. We urge all Californians and CNPS members to do their part to protect California's native plants.
by Tom Oberbauer, Vice President CNPS-San Diego
Lest one gain the impression that the wildflowers this year were confined to the desert, I want to describe two coastal areas as well. In mid-March, I figured that Point Loma was getting close to flowering. Previous years following good rainfall seasons, the tidepool side of Point Loma will have displays of Eschscholzia californica (California Poppy), Encelia californica (California Encelia) and what used to be called Coreopsis maritima, now Leptosyne maritima (Sea Dahlia). So, on the last day that I visited the desert, late in the afternoon, I drove to Point Loma and down on the tidepool side 5 minutes before it was going to be blocked off at 4:30 pm. The afternoon light was magical on the landscape and the flowers. The Encelia californica was blooming wildly.
By Arne Johansen, Co-Chairperson Habitat Restoration
There is an old saying: 'The difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a little longer.' I was reminded of this as I described our current work area to a new volunteer. From where we were standing (surrounded by eucalyptus, Arundo and palms) I explained how our project area extends two miles downstream and another mile upstream. Then I pointed east and added that our project extends three miles along that side creek. Out loud it just seems impossibly large.
Additionally, it also seems that the more we get done the more there is left to do. This happens in multiple ways. First, our success with one project acts as a snowball rolling downhill. So we added two new pieces to our project area this season. While more work, this allows us to manage the watershed cohesively. It also adds to our ability to stay flexible and respond to circumstances. But it just seems like so much more and there is also work which begets more work.
This winter we concentrated our activities on one mile of the San Dieguito River. This is a joint project with USFW, the San Dieguito River Conservancy, many private property owners, and us, in conjunction with the local fire department. Through our joint efforts we have been able to bring in additional resources in the form of ACE (American Conservation Experience) to help with biomass removal, which lessens fire risk – a huge plus.
By Frank Landis, Chairperson Conservation Committee
We seem to be hearing that in all sorts of unexpected contexts right now (I'm writing this on May 1st), but I'm going to focus on climate change and policy again. The issue I'm struggling with is the North County Multiple Species Conservation Program (NCMSCP, because you need more acronyms). I'm on the steering committee, and the documents (hopefully) will be out this fall. We'll be dealing with it for a while, and I wanted to air the issues so that we can all start thinking about it, because it really is complicated.
Problem one is climate change. According to a recent National Geographic article, half of 4,000 species surveyed are moving towards the poles, about one mile per year on land on average (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/04/climate -change-species-migration-disease/ ). We'll argue endlessly about whether this is true for all land species, but the point is that the climate is changing, it will continue to change, species are responding to it, and what we're fighting right now is massive societal inertia to determine how fast and how far the climate swings from 20th Century normal. The nasty part of even extreme climate change isn't the quasi-stable end state (basically like the Miocene), it's how extreme the peak heat is between now and then (a few centuries of something possibly like the end Permian Great Dying, or more likely, the end Paleocene). That peak heat is the extinction-maker we want to avoid if at all possible. That aside, the point is that the world is already changing, it will continue to change, and we're talking about what will suffer, not how to stop the change.
by Tom Oberbauer, Vice President CNPS-San Diego
For those of you who were not able to make it out to Borrego Valley this March, I am sorry.
I must admit, growing up, I was not especially fond of desert. I had only been through deserts on family road trips to elsewhere in the southwest. We always had to leave at 1 am to get through the desert before it was too hot. I grew up favoring mountains with forests over deserts. However, during an ecology class at SDSU, we had a project in the desert in the spring and I became more interested. I began to really appreciate the deserts, the starkness of the terrain, the pockets of unique habitats and the wildflowers. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, I was a naturalist on SDNHM ecology trips to the desert each spring.
There were some exceptional rainfall seasons at that time with exceptional wildflowers. They were 1978, 1979, 1980, 1983 and 1993. In 1995 and even 2005, the third wettest season in San Diego history, wildflower displays in Borrego were exceptional. I remember one spring driving out each weekend for a month to enjoy all of the phases.
By Frank Landis, Chairperson Conservation Committee
There's something about reading about Polyphagous Shot Hole Borers and commenting on the North County Multiple Species Conservation Program (MSCP) that just inspire me. Sadly, I'm not sure anyone will appreciate what I'm thinking about.
Probably most of you are aware of the Shot Hole Borers (http://ucanr.edu/sites/pshb/ is the easiest source of information). There are two species that are physically indistinguishable, but which are genetically distinct and come from different parts of Asia. In San Diego County, we have the Kuroshio Shot Hole Borer (Euwallacea sp. I'm still looking for the specific epithet. Let's call it KSHB), and it also has been found in Orange County and Santa Barbara as well. Up in LA and Ventura, they have the Polyphagous Shot Hole Borer (also Euwallacea sp. I'm still looking for the specific epithet, and I don't think it has one either. We'll dub it PSHB).
The problem with these two non-native beetle species is that they like to burrow into the trunks of trees, and like other ambrosia beetles, these tiny pests –they're about the size of a comma or a period on paper—bring their own species of fungi with them (Fusarium euwallaceae and a Graphium species). These fungi, along with the beetle galleries in the trunk, kill the trees.
By Tom Oberbauer, Vice President CNPS-San Diego
The far northern part of San Diego County includes land that is north of Camp Pendleton under the ownership of the Cleveland National Forest. A portion of the Cleveland National Forest is the San Mateo Wilderness Area, a series of canyons including Devil’s Canyon. In Riverside County, several volcanic plateaus exist, including Mesa de Colorado and Mesa de Burro. These are volcanic plateaus consisting of a cap of volcanic rock that was laid down during the upper Miocene (8 million years ago, Kennedy 1977). The once continuous mesa formed by the volcanic flow was divided by erosion into a series of separate mesas. Nearly all of them are located in Riverside County, except one, Miller Mountain. The peak is 2,953 feet, with a mesa portion at 2,946 feet in elevation.
Another interesting fact is that the Santa Rosa Basalt volcanic rock is the home of Brodiaea santarosae (Santa Rosa Basalt brodiaea), a species that was described in 2007 (Chester, Armstrong and Madore 2007). It has characteristics that indicate it is clearly related to the federally threatened state Brodiaea filifolia (thread-leafed brodiaea), but it has longer flowers and grows bigger plus many have long filamentous staminodia but sometimes none at all.
The Brodiaea was one of the reasons that I have been interested in visiting the area, besides the fact that it is in a remote part of San Diego County that I have never seen.
By Arne Johanson, Co-Chairperson Habitat Restoration Committee
We were to have an adventure – just two boys going out alone in uncharted territory. Andy is a 5-year old neighbor and this was our first time out with just the two of us. His mother packed water and a snack in his backpack. He added sunglasses and a notepad just like he has seen grownups do. Then we went exploring in some seldom visited parts of a 400-acre open space that our CNPS group has restored.
By Frank Landis, Chairperson Conservation Committee
Wow, what a busy winter. As I write this, I'm checking the news periodically to see whether the Oroville Dam fails, or whether the engineers keep the Sacramento Valley from trying to turn back into the "Inland Sea" it was before the 1920s. This is hopefully irrelevant, but I have my doubts, because I'm reading the EIR for Merge 56, the first development slated for the eastern edge of Del Mar Mesa. The problem isn't particularly a CNPS concern. Their design, as I feared, has Deer Creek routed through a basin and storm drain through a pile of fill, and because the channel at that point makes a "Z," the culvert turns at a sharp angle from the upstream and downstream flows. Atop that fill is the southward extension of Camino Del Sur. I've protested this design for years, because most of the watershed above Deer Creek is paved over by Rancho Peñasquitos. As a result, we don't really know how high that creek can flood. While we can make some guesses based on 100 year floods and so forth, I keep wondering how it will handle a tropical storm or hurricane, or even a big atmospheric river getting weepy. Presumably their system will clog and the water will start chewing through the fill holding up Camino Del Sur. If the road/dam breaches, all the crap goes down canyon, chewing up those Nuttall's scrub oaks I've been trying to protect for years. Nothing big like Oroville, but as with the Oroville Dam's problems, which were predicted by environmental groups in 2005 (and ignored), it's a fairly predictable disaster.
By Sondra Boddy, CNPS-San Diego Garden Native Committee Member
With over 16 inches of rain since October, everything in our California native garden is growing – including a bumper crop of weeds! Before we can sit back and enjoy the spectacular spring wildflower display, we are working on getting rid of these annoying trespassers. Hand-weeding is our preferred eradication method in late winter, when the ground is soft and the weeds are large enough to be pulled out from the roots. Pulling weeds might not be your idea of fun, but it is very important and there are ways to make it easier and more enjoyable. It can even be good for you. How? Read on, California Native DIY Gardeners!
Eradicating weeds is important not only because it improves the appearance of your garden, but also because it promotes the health of your garden. Non-native or “naturalized” species are genetically programmed to compete with native species; they usually grow and bloom faster, blocking out sunlight and hogging water and nutrients. If left unchecked, weeds can damage or even kill oaks and other native flora by disrupting the fragile fungal network in the soil which allows native plants to share resources and support one another. Pulling weeds promotes good “garden hygiene,” which is essential to building a vibrant California native garden.
Before you wade out into the sea of green meanies, here are some general pointers
By Frank Landis, Chairperson Conservation Committee
Despite what some may think, I'm not anything like an inside player in local politics. As the latest example, I found out that the Sierra Club and the Cleveland National Forest Foundation are each suing San Diego County again by reading about it online at the UT San Diego. CNPSSD is not involved in either lawsuit, of course--you would have heard about it otherwise. Still, these two suits are part of the difficult struggle we're all facing as San Diego grapples with diverging pressures to decarbonize, to grow, to build huge numbers of affordable homes, and to not destroy what's left of our environment. While I don't know much more about the suits than what is in the newspaper article, I do know a bit about the surrounding conditions, and that's the topic of this essay.
Yes, the name Dichelostemma may soon be a history note in San Diego County and the rest of southern California. The genus Dichelostemma will not be going away, it just won't apply to the plants we have known as blue dicks, school bells or wild hyacinth.
I am writing this in Sacramento to the sound of pounding rain, returning from a two-day symposium hosted by the Northern California Botanists. Not many of you, perhaps none of you, have been to one of these excellent symposiums typically held in early January at Chico, California. It is a good long drive from San Diego. The symposium was held over January 9th and 10th. The drive to get to it and back was also an excellent opportunity to sample the atmospheric river that had been making news and apparently beating at my hotel window.
At the symposium's poster session this morning, a poster presented by a prominent northern California botanist and contributor to the Jepson Manual, Robert Preston, caught my eye. Currently, Preston has been focusing some attention on Brodiaea and related groups. The poster was titled: “Not another Damn Name Change! Why Blue Dicks is not a Dichelostemma”.
Dichelostemma capitatum already has a bit of a checkered history. It has been called variously Hookeria puchella, Brodiaea pulchella, and Dichelostemma pulchella. All three names, as Preston explains, have ultimately been shown to be incorrectly applied to this plant and the name that appeared in the 1993 edition of the Jepson manual was Dicholostemma capitatum. Many of you familiar with Latin names may only have known blue dicks by this latter name. Those of us that spent our formative botany years clutching a Munz book knew this plant as D. pulchella.
Mr. Preston made a compelling argument that we should be using Dipterostemon capitatus for this plant. The name is already available and was proposed by Per Axel Rydberg in 1912. Apparently no one took Rydberg or his name seriously, as you can hardly find reference to it. I'd certainly never heard of it. However, recent researchers have found genetic and embryologic evidence that suggest Rydberg was right on the mark. Will the botanical community at large accept this new name with old roots? Very likely they will.
Image: Dawn Endico from Menlo Park, California, Dichelostemma capitatum, 2005, CC BY-SA 2.0
