Walt
Fidler, Don Rideout and I really enjoyed seeing flowers, flowers,
flowers on this hike. We are so lucky to have such a good show
of flowers in the desert in October!
We marveled
throughout our hike about the carpets of Pectis, many of which were
still in peak bloom. Don's pix of one of the many, many, fields
of Pectis:
http://tchester.org/temp/221025/rideout/pectis_field_1226_30.jpg
The sandy areas had a number of Abronia villosa in
full bloom. My pix of one patch:
http://tchester.org/temp/221025/abronia_villosa_2_1_30.jpg
Don's post of one Abronia plant:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/140031785
And we really enjoyed the unicorn plant = devils
claw = Proboscidea althaeifolia, seen in flower, fruit, and in a few
cases, the dried split-open fruit that IS the devils claw!
My
only regret is that I didn't take a picture of my ankle with the
devils claw wrapped around it on a live plant. (:-)
Walt
captured in words one of the beautiful things about this plant, that
it could be easily identified in all stages. Even as a baby,
its shiny deep green leaves are distinctive. Its flowers are
amazing, so big and beautiful. And to top it all off, the fruit
looks a bit like a giant okra pod while fresh, and then splits open
to form the devils claw that was said to hook around the legs of big
animals we used to have in this area before humans arrived!
No
one discusses and shows great photographs of our plants better than
Wayne Armstrong; here's his page on our species and related species:
Devil's Claws: Hitchhikers On Big Animals
https://www2.palomar.edu/users/warmstrong/ww0801.htm
Note especially the great drawing by Elaine
Armstrong of two devils claws hooked on the back leg of a giant
ground sloth (20 feet long from head to tail):
https://www2.palomar.edu/users/warmstrong/images/slothtr.gif
Illustration of the giant ground sloth's relative
size to a human:
https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/10174316/dp95mj-1.jpg?width=778
Don's posts of devils claw from our trip:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/140033031
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/140119319
My non-iNat pix showing Abronia, Pectis, and
Devil's Claw together (the pix was only for the Devil's Claw, but the
others were so abundant they snuck into this pix):
http://tchester.org/temp/221025/Proboscidea_althaeifolia_4_2_30.jpg
My pix of the Devil's Claw on my hand:
http://tchester.org/temp/221025/Proboscidea_althaeifolia_5_4_crop_55.jpg
See below for more pic of the stunning Pectis
displays.
The flowers from those three species were the
highlight of our trip.
Details:
Don
and I posted a whopping 108 observations of 87 species (click on
"grid" if that is not the default view you get):
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?on=2022-10-25&place_id=any&user_id=lagoondon,tchester
Don did the heavy lifting, and posted 74
observations of 70 species, of which he counted 30 species in bloom
(oddly, iNat gives 70 species if I just search for his obs, but lists
only 68 species if I search for both his and my obs). I posted
34 obs of 28 species, concentrating mainly on posting species Don
didn't post, or posting in areas where Don didn't post.
We
had 92 observations in an area that only had 14 observations prior to
our posts:
All 96 obs:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?nelat=32.959948449509554&nelng=-116.34396996349096&place_id=any&subview=map&swlat=32.947236652732286&swlng=-116.36388268321753&user_id=lagoondon,tchester&geoprivacy=open&taxon_geoprivacy=open
The 14 obs near our surveyed area prior to our
posts:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?d2=2022-10-24&geoprivacy=open&nelat=32.959948449509554&nelng=-116.35113682597876&place_id=any&subview=map&swlat=32.947236652732286&swlng=-116.36388268321753&taxon_geoprivacy=open
Walt did an utterly fantastic job of taking
hundreds of GPS points for good maps for some of these species.
Don and I arrived at the west end of the Vallecito
Stage Station County Park at about 11:05 a.m.
Walt
Fidler's car was already there, with Walt doing his usual great job
of exploring the area before we arrived to optimize our trip.
In this case, his plan was to scout the area south of S2, since we
only wanted to explore there if that area had gotten good monsoonal
rain, and had happy plants. If not, he was going to leave a
note on the gate to tell us to go north of S2.
We found
no note, so headed south. We met Walt along the main road
within a mile from the car.
But first I photographed all
the Desert Shaggy Mane Mushrooms along the road, which I had
photographed eight days previously. Much to my surprise, they all
looked exactly the same as they did eight days earlier, including the
one that was just emerging from the ground. My take is that the
just-emerging one ran out of water and couldn't expand further.
My post from this trip:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/140227307
Another interesting thing about them is that we saw
not a single other Shaggy Mane on our hike, and I hadn't seen any on
my hike north of S2 eight days previously. Was there only
enough rain for them to come up along the road? That seems very
hard to believe.
This location is the westernmost outpost
of this species in iNat obs of this area, which might have something
to do with that, too.
Heading south, amidst the
huge weedpit of Sisymbrium irio along the road with the mesquite
bosque beyond on both sides, there were scattered Pectis plants, at
least one Datura wrightii, and a number of Datura discolor. I
was quite surprised at the amount of D. discolor, since we were
essentially at the highest elevation known for these plants in this
area.
We quickly found the reason why D. discolor isn't
found at higher elevation; some of the plants were severely damaged
by frost! Walt reported that the temperature in Blair Valley was 34
degrees earlier this morning, so this frost damage probably occurred
just hours before we arrived.
My pix of the frost damage:
http://tchester.org/temp/221025/Datura_discolor_frosted_1_30.jpg
http://tchester.org/temp/221025/Datura_discolor_frosted_2_30.jpg
http://tchester.org/temp/221025/Datura_discolor_frosted_3_30.jpg
We were pleased to see a few desert lilies with
leaves, the first ones we've seen for a very long time. Don's
post of the one with the most leaves:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/140031571
After getting through the mesquite bosque, we
wanted to head east, where there were no iNat obs. The only slight
problem was a barbed wire fence that was in pretty good shape, which
may have had something to do with the lack of previous iNat obs
here. (:-)
We REALLY wanted to go east when we saw
big fields of Pectis on the other side of the fence. My pix
from our side of the fence at the time:
http://tchester.org/temp/221025/Pectis_on_other_side_of_fence_1_30.jpg
http://tchester.org/temp/221025/Pectis_on_other_side_of_fence_2_30.jpg
http://tchester.org/temp/221025/Pectis_on_other_side_of_fence_5_30.jpg
Fortunately, we soon found a spot where we could crawl
under the fence at 1.2 miles from the car, and Don took this pix:
http://tchester.org/temp/221025/rideout/pectis_field_1226_30.jpg
We then headed east to the bottom of the hills a
short distance away, arriving there at 12:30 p.m. Those hills
are shown in my pix above of the Pectis fields.
We
had a snack there and recorded all the species at the base of the
hills. Don and Walt climbed up to the top of the ridge there,
and found a number of other species, while I walked around the north
side of the ridge. We spent a full hour there!
My
pix of Don and Walt in those hills:
heading up:
http://tchester.org/temp/221025/don_walt_heading_up_hills_30.jpg
coming down:
http://tchester.org/temp/221025/don_walt_coming_down_hills_30.jpg
Don's pix looking up the Potrero from the top of
that hill:
http://tchester.org/temp/221025/rideout/view_up_potrero_from_hill_1321_30.jpg
Don's pix of Walt taking GPS points on the hill:
http://tchester.org/temp/221025/rideout/walt_taking_gps_points_1326_30.jpg
There were a good number of Perityle plants where
we first arrived at the hill, but the poor things were plagued with
leaf miners, as well as something much bigger, probably the abundant
grasshoppers here, taking big chunks out of the leaves. My
post:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/140290039
We then took off to the south to get around the
hills, and went up the main drainage that comes from a saddle above
Agua Caliente County Park. There was a nice field of Pectis and
Datura at the junction of that drainage and the one from the south.
Don's pix:
http://tchester.org/temp/221025/rideout/tom_checking_a_plant_1347_30.jpg
The diversity was pretty low on that route above
the junction, and the Pectis and other happy plants petered out to
lower densities as we got near the base of those hills, even though
the ocotillos were still lush and green. There apparently was
enough rain there to make the shrubs happy, but not enough to
germinate hordes of monsoonal annuals. My pix looking ahead to
the saddle:
http://tchester.org/temp/221025/pano_at_turn_around_point_3_30.jpg
So we turned around, and then headed south for a
while to round those hills. All too soon our time was up, so we
headed cross-country following a route about 1/4 mile south roughly
paralleling our route up the drainage. We explored two smallish
hills on the way back, looking for Abutilon, but found none. I
did spot an annual Astragalus there:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/140226852
We spotted a young plant that might be a baby
sandpaper plant (thanks to Fred and Carla's identification):
Don's
obs:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/140034626
And another that is probably a baby Bebbia (thanks
again to Fred and Carla):
My obs:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/140304354
One extremely-unusual observation was that there
were zillions and zillions of E. micromera all along our route, and
not a single plant of E. setiloba. There were only two plants of E.
polycarpa, which qualifies as front page news for its absence here.
We ended up getting back to our cars an hour before
sunset.
--
tom
chester
