Flora of the Santa Ana River Trail - herbaceous plants

Most people know this as the Santa Ana River Trail (2E03).  The sign maker apparently did not.

 

I've really only made educated guesses about the plant IDs, so I'd welcome disagreement; sharp-eyed readers should feel free to leave their corrections.  As noted in an earlier blog post, I need to step up my photography for definitive plant ID.  I'm kicking this out of draft mode because I've lost the drive to drill down on plant species for the moment.

Flora of the Santa Ana River Trail - Calocedrus and Quercus

I've come to the conclusion that I really need to step up my photography in order to make better species ID.  Too many times the ID is dependent on small features such as finding hairs on the undersides of leaves, or something equally obscure. 

Hiking along the Santa Ana (or Anna) River Trail, I came across this Incense Cedar (Calocedrus decurrens) and a number of its progeny growing nearby. This is an uncommon tree at Camp Tahquitz, so I spent some time admiring it assuming it to be a singular example. Not so. Just around the corner was a dense stand of them. The smell was delightful!

More after the break

Flora of the Santa Ana River corridor

Found in the riparian corridor along a very short stretch of the Santa Ana river in Barton Flats.

Rosa (perhaps R. californica or, more likely, R. woodsii ssp. ultramontana):

I'm certain this is Ribes nevadense (Sierra currant, mountain pink currant):

Aquilegia formosa (Columbine, Crimson Columbine, Sitka columbine, western columbine):

Perhaps a Juncus? Maybe even J. effusus (Bog Rush, common bog rush, common rush).

Flora of Camp Tahquitz - Ribes, Quercus, Sambucus, and Solidago

I was back at Camp Tahquitz recently and took a few more plant photos, which I've identified to the best of my ability.  As always, if you have a different opinion, I'd like to hear from you.

Ribes cereum (wax currant).  This is one of three types of Ribes (goosberries and currants) that exist around camp.

A nearby oak is identified by sign as Canyon Live Oak (Quercus chrysolepis, Canyon Oak, Maul Oak, Goldcup Oak, Gold cup Live Oak, canyon live oak, gold cup oak).  Q. chrysolepsis exist nearby, but from what I can tell they have a much smoother edge to their leaf.

So while I think it's definitely an oak (Quercus), I think it's a different species of  oak.  Candidates that are locally known and reported on Calflora are Quercus dumosa (Nuttall's scrub oak, coastal sage scrub oak, scrub oak) and Quercus wislizeni var. frutescens (Chapparal Oak, Live oak, bush interior live oak, interior live oak).  Q. dumosa is the best match with regard to the size of the tree and leaf colors, but it's clearly competing for sun and nutrients with the larger pine that it grows beneath, so I don't want to put too great an emphasis on size.  Another possibility is that this is a hybrid; oaks commonly hybridize.  It's interesting that all the oaks noted are at the upper end of their standard elevation range according to CalFlora.org, yet they are reported in Barton Flats by reputable sources. 

There's a nice Elderberry (Sambucus nigra  ssp. caerulea  or Sambucus mexicana, blue elderberry) in camp which I mentioned previously, but did not show in pictures.

 

The plant pictured below was a bit of a puzzle, and I mentioned my guess in a previous blog post that it was Solidago (Goldenrod). I based that on the following series of observations: 

 

Elsewhere in camp (where it is sunnier) what appears to be the same plant is in bloom.  In bloom it is much more easily and clearly identifiable as Goldenrod (Solidago - probably S. confinis, southern goldenrod).

Strawberries vs. Cinquefoils

I recently stated that woodland strawberry (Fragaria vesca) and sticky cinquefoil (Drymocallis glandulosa) could be confused if one were to ignore the prominent flower spikes on the Cinquefoil. While hiking on the Santa Ana River Trail I came across a large patch of Fragaria with prominent flower spikes. "Oh no," I thought, "this can't be Fragaria." And it wasn't. Phew.  Apparently they like the same growing conditions and happily intergrow.  The opportunity to look at them side by side gave me new insight into their differences and they aren't so close in appearance that they can't be distinguished by a keen observer.

Above is a picture of a Strawberry leaf (upper right - three somewhat elliptical leaves touching at the stem end) and three leaved of Cinquefoil (lower left - rounder leaves lighter in color and not touching at the stem end).

A patch of Fragaria is always low-growing.  The tallest spike in the above photo is somewhat out of focus at center front.  It has to be all of 4" tall.

Cinquefoil leaves on a stalk. It goes up and up to where the flowers are:

Cinquefoil has these characteristic flower stalks.  I haven't seen any in the prime of flowering, only with these typical dried blooms.

Artemisia leaf variation

I've been pondering on Artemisia.  I believe the picture below is Artemisia, A. douglasiana (Mugwort, California Mugwort, Douglas' sagewort) if I'm not mistaken. I took it while on a recent hike in Barton Flats.  But the leaf shapes are so very different!

Artemisia grows by rhizomes, and these two appeared at the edge of a large patch.  One would expect a plant that grows by rhizomes to be genetically identical across the entire patch.  Yet I noted similar leaf variation in Artemisia I found at nearby Camp Tahquitz.  So what leads to this observed leaf variation? 

My naive ideas:
Older leaves develop the lobed character.  Young leaves don't have it.
These are actually genetically distinct plants and the lobed leaves are highly variable.
Lobed character is dependent upon the growing conditions (unlikely, since these are so close together)
These aren't both Artemisia. (always a possibility, but unlikely since the lower leaves on both plants are lobed)

Variability in the leaf is indicated in the Calflora database too, both in photos and in their link to the Jepson manual treatment, which seems to allow for 3 to 5 or more lobes: "Leaf: evenly spaced, 1–11(15) cm, narrowly elliptic to widely oblanceolate, entire or coarsely 3–5(+)-lobed near tip, ± sparsely tomentose adaxially, densely white-tomentose abaxially."

There's some new vocabuluary for me there, so here's a translation:

"Leaf: evenly spaced, 1–11(15) cm, narrowly elliptic to widely oblanceolate [pointed more narrowly at the stem end], entire or coarsely 3–5(+)-lobed near tip, ± sparsely tomentose [matted hairs] adaxially [stem-facing, esp on top of leaf], densely white-tomentose abaxially [away from stem facing, esp on bottom of leaf]."

I actually own a bound copy of Jepson, purchased against the day that I might have to resort to it.  I guess that day has come. Still, the single pointed leaf isn't explicitly called out in Jepson.  In the photo you can see that the lower leaves of both plants are lobed.

So, does anyone know why the leaves in this photo look so different?

Flora of Camp Tahquitz - herbaceous plants

For additional and background information see my other posts on the Flora of Camp Tahquitz.

Note: I think I'll throw this post out into the wild in its current incomplete form and hope I get some plant ID help.  Update: (8/2) I've decided that it's P. labrosus, not P. rostriflrus. (7/31) I decided that my ID of Solidago was right based on a return trip. Update: (30 July) I have an ID for the "cute plant" courtesy of a nice reader.  It's Horkelia.  Also, I fixed a self-inflicted misidentification of Penstemon.

I'm not sure why my focus seems to be on the smaller herbaceous plants.  Perhaps I can see myself more easily growing them at home.  I'm looking for plant ID help on some of these - I'll willingly take your input and corrections.

Penstemon.  I'm thinking Penstemon rostriflorus  (Bridge penstemon, Bridge's Penstemon, beaked penstemon) rather than P. labrosus  (San Gabriel beardtongue) because of the more rounded flower ends.  (8/2): I've reversed myself.  P. rostriflorus seems to have a more clumping growth habit than I see here and different flower / leaf configurations so I'm coming down in favor of Penstemon labrosus (San Gabriel beardtongue). I had earlier this mis-identified as California Fuschia (Epilobium). oops.

There's some interesting color variation.  I'm not sure if it's age that makes the color change or if it's just a typical variation.  I could find examples that supported both points of view.

A large patch of Mugwort (Artemisia douglasiana, California Mugwort, Douglas' sagewort) at the bottom of the meadow.  A hand lettered sign noted that this was "Common sage" but all parties that I've consulted now agree that isn't correct.

much more below...

Flora of Camp Tahquitz - trees

I guess I take trees in the context of Camp Tahquitz more for granted than herbaceous plants since I didn't take many detailed pictures or notes of what I saw.  Therefore the list of trees (even from memory) is somewhat short compared to what I could have observed.

The area is mostly forested with oak and pine.  I can't tell whether this is a transitional state on the path: pine forest --> logged pine forest --> regrowth of oak and pine --> dominance of pine, or if it's normal.  I suspect it's normal to have a mixed oak and conifer forest.

Elderberry (Sambucus nigra ssp. caerulea, according to Calflora)
Ponderosa (Yellow) pine (Pinus ponderosa)
California black oak (Quercus kelloggii)
Canyon live oak (Quercus chrysolepis) A hand-lettered sign identified this as Canyon live oak, but I can't tell the difference between Canyon live oak and Live oak (Quercus wislizeni).  Perhaps Canyon live oak has a smoother edged leaf than Live oak?
Incense cedar (Calocedrus decurrens)
Pacific Willow (Salix lasiandra, planted at the bottom of a meadow judging by the uniform row.  A hand-lettered sign identifies them as Pacific Willow and I didn't make any observations that disagreed.)
An unidentified fir or two

There might be an opportunity to return to Camp Tahquitz later in the year for more botanizing which may give me a chance to be more precise about the trees. 

For certain, larger Ponderosa Pines used to be more plentiful in the area, as evidenced by some of the remaining stumps.  They were logged and at least some of them were used to build the historic log cabins found on the property to this day.   In this meadow picture, a Black Oak is growing right up from the middle of an old Ponderosa stump.

Close up:

A juvenile Black Oak caught my eye because its emerging foliage had a nice color. I didn't even see the moth(?) until I was processing the pictures.

Black oak have a distinctive leaf shape. I tried an app for iPhone called Leaf Snap and it correctly identified Quercus from the leaf shape, but Quercus kelloggii wasn't on the matching list.  The app seemed biased towards East coast trees.

A mighty oak, straight and true. Or not:

Flora of Camp Tahquitz

I spent a satisfying week again this summer at Camp Tahquitz, a Scout camp in San Bernardino County on Highway 38, about half way up to Big Bear from the 10 freeway. The nearest burg is Angelus Oaks.  Camp sits at about 6500' elevation and has 640 acres of mostly unimproved land with a central area of rustic campsites for Scouts, a few historic log cabins, and some more modern camp facilities (commissary, offices, etc).

Scouts have to identify 10 native plants as a rank advancement requirement and camp is an ideal place to do that. I was able to indulge my interest in native plants a little during my stay and took a number of photos that I am still in the process of completely identifying. Feel free to add comments if you think I've misidentified something or need clarification - that's how we'll all get smarter.  I used Calflora.org to confirm some of my plant identifications but often the species determination is difficult.  I'll have to start consulting Jepson.

I'll start with trees in the following post and then follow that with herbaceous plants.  This is by no means a comprehensive list of plants - There's still plenty of work to be done.

Useful links in this series are the labels at the bottom of each post, "Barton Flats flora" (a superset of Camp Tahquitz and surrounding areas in Barton Flats) and "Camp Tahquitz flora" (the subset of plants that I've found at Camp Tahquitz).