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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

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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!

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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

Can San Diego Grow Up?

By Frank Landis, Conservation Chair

Yes, this is not the kind of remark that an ex-Angeleno like me should be making in this part of the world, even if it is intended as a lame pun, as here. I'm writing this as the Lilac Fire burns in the San Luis Rey watershed, which is an event you probably didn't want to remember, but this isn't another column about fire safety.

Here's the issue: if you believe what I promote for CNPSSD, the solution to many of San Diego's woes, including losing homes to fire, is that we're all supposed to put solar panels on our roofs, use public transit, and ride bikes everywhere but on our wildlands, because mountain bikes are tearing up ecological reserves. Most importantly, we are to stop building single family homes in high-fire areas; instead we are to build apartments, condominiums, and town-homes near transit lines. In other words, we're supposed to grow up, not out, hence the lame pun in the title.

Sounds wonderful, right? I'm sure everybody with a native garden wants to replace it with a multistory granny flat, as well as subdividing their multistory homes into apartments, as well as lobby hard for bike lanes and bus stops in their neighborhood. Doesn't that sound great to you?

Wilderness

Pictured: Coastal sage scrub and riparian habitat at San Diego National Wildlife Refuge | Photo by USFWS Pacific

“This is not wilderness for designation or for a park. Not a scenic wilderness and not one good for fishing or the viewing of wildlife. It is wilderness that gets into your nostrils, that runs with your sweat. It is the core of everything living, wilderness like molten iron.
”
— Craig Childs, The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild

Standard Story #1

By Frank Landis, Conservation Chair

The Cal Fire Vegetation Treatment Program PEIR (version 4) is out. Comments are due in January, and you are more than welcome to help. I'll be aggregating the comments for our chapter, so if you have any, send them to conservation@cnpssd.org. Since we have had issues with this, I should note that I follow CNPS state policies when I represent CNPSSD, so if you want to publish a comment that contradicts these policies, I'm not going to include it. You can submit such comments under your own name.

Here though, I'm going to talk about the aftermath of the Wine County fires, and the stories blaming chaparral for the fire's impacts. The prime example was High Country News publishing "Shrub-choked wildlands played a role in California fires" on October 24, 2017. This was particularly awkward, as there wasn't that much chaparral in the area of the Tubbs fire, and a variety of other vegetation burned too, especially close to homes.

A Look at Recent Additions to the CNPS Inventory

By Fred Roberts, Rare Plant Botanist

People join CNPS for many different reasons. Some members are there for the field trips, others for gardening advice, some are to learn more about California’s diverse flora. Others are there for rare plant science or conservation. If like me, you are in this last set, you probably know all about the online CNPS Inventory of Rare and Endangered Plants of California (Inventory). The Inventory is the official widely recognized list of sensitive California plants along with some information on ecology and general information on distribution.

If you are an expert on San Diego plants, and have been in the game for a while, you will remember when the experts would meet on rare occasions in advance of a new printed edition of the Inventory. The room would be abuzz with rare plant gossip. These were the heady days when you almost couldn’t look anywhere without realizing some species worthy of conservation status had totally been overlooked.

Today, of course, the printed Inventory is a thing of the past and we have an online version. I do miss those rooms full of lively botanists exchanging data. However, there are advantages to the new system. A widerrange of botanists can participate. Updates can be done frequently, many times a year vs. once a decade. You can check out the Inventory right now from the comfort of your phone/iPad/computer. Just type www.cnps.org/cnps/rareplants/inventory into your browser. You can catch the latest news, read up on the history of the Inventory, the status review process, and the ranking system. And of course, you can search the online Inventory for your favorite rare plant.

Dedication of the Betsy Cory Native Plant Garden in Chula Vista

By Kay Stewart

(L to R): Chris, Betty, Kay, Joan, and Emily plant and primp. The
boxes over the plants have beautiful information posters.

About four years ago Betsy Cory rallied her fellow gardeners in the Chula Vista Garden Club to plant scented California Native Plants in a courtyard garden in the Chula Vista South Branch Library. In addition, a series of beautiful information panels were installed that explain the garden. They were created by two of Betsy's friends.  

In October the garden was dedicated to Betsy's memory. A group of her friends gathered for the dedication. Several in attendance agreed to come for a maintenance party in a few weeks. So in November a group of five Garden club members met me at the garden and we spruced it up, and planted twenty more scented plants. The majority of plants were donated by the San Diego Chapter of CNPS. 

Robin, one of Betsy Cory's daughters, next to the Garden's sign.

The library's irrigation tech will keep an eye on the courtyard to be sure the new plants receive the water they need. A member of the garden club will also make a weekly visit to check up on it and to hand-water some lovely large blue pots with plants.

Members of the Garden Club are now working on ideas for how to bring classes to the garden so teachers can use it as part of their classroom curriculum.

(L to R) Sandy, Betty, Chris, Joan, Emily (Chula Vista Garden Club
members) and Kay (CNPS) after planting.

The Native Landscape Renovated at Cabrillo National Monument Visitor Center

The Native Landscape Renovated at Cabrillo National Monument Visitor Center

By Kay Stewart

The landscape that welcome visitors to Cabrillo National Monument Visitor Center has a beautiful new look. A great team has implemented a landscape plan developed as a collaborative effort to renovate the site. Together, they removed thirty years of non-native and weedy shrubs, and replanted plant species native to Point Loma. 

Working with the ACE (American Conservation Experience)

Working with the ACE (American Conservation Experience)

A report from the Habitat Restoration Committee by Bob Byrnes

We finished our 2017 partnership with ACE (American Conservation Experience) last Thursday.  We worked together for two weeks, with a break in between to let the heat wave dissipate.  ACE worked very hard, as usual - this is our third year with them.  They are paid for by grant funds, and are comprised of young (to me at least) college-age persons acquiring practical experience in the field of conservation and restoration.  We focused on Pomponio Ranch, a horse ranch located in the downstream area of the San Dieguito River Valley. 

Vegetation Communities and Climate Change

Vegetation Communities and Climate Change

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.

EarthLab Demo Gardens Thriving Thanks to CNPS-SD Mini-Grant

By Kay Stewart, Mini Grant coordinator with EarthLab Demo Gardens

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/. 

Pictures from the Fall Native Gardening Workshop September 16, 2017

All photos by Phillip Roullard