The Flora of the PCT: A8 Sunrise Parking Area Junction to Highway 78: Plant Trail Order See The Flora of the PCT: A8 Sunrise Parking Area Junction to Highway 78 for an introduction to this checklist.
This version of the Checklist is in rough order of plants along the trail, from the Sunrise Parking Area Junction to Highway 78 at Scissors Crossing.
This trail order plant list is especially interesting, since this section of trail begins in the Laguna Mountains in chaparral at 5000 feet elevation, descends through the desert transition area, and ends in typical desert flora at 2250 feet. The species at the beginning of this section are almost completely different from the species at the end of this section! The list below documents how the plant species change along this section.
The plant trail order is not exact, because five different surveys, at different times of the year in different years, with different species visible in each survey, were merged to produce this list. A major difficulty is that the lists done from north to south noted the first location of a species in that direction, which almost always is not the first location of a species if one was surveying south to north, as in the list presented here. Those species seen only in surveys from north to south will almost always be found earlier than in the order below.
Species that were vouchered, but not seen, were placed only roughly in what might be near their actual location.
The column #Pls gives the minimum number of plants, up to a maximum of 99 plants, for species seen in the field surveys of A8b; there may be additional number of plants of those species in section A8a, where abundances were not estimated. Species with A8a in that column were only seen in Section A8a, which has been surveyed only once by RT and Shaun Hawke. Species with RT in that column were seen only in Section A8b by RT and Shaun Hawke in a survey of the entire trail on 5 May 2013. No abundance estimates were made in those surveys.Species with V in that column were vouchered from the trail.
Species #1 to #122 are all first seen in Section A8a, even if they have a "number of plants" in that column, indicating that they were also seen, and counted, in Section A8b. Thus species with only A8a in that column drop out before Rodriguez Road. Species #123 and higher were not seen in section A8a, and so have appeared for the first time in section A8b.
For species seen by us, an abbreviation is sometimes given just before the number of plants, to indicate uncertain determinations; see abbreviation for the determination uncertainties.
See Information about the links from the Scientific Name and Common Name.
Version for printing, without lines and other text on this page: html (6 pages) or pdf Clickbook booklet (2 double-sided pages). (See printing instructions for an explanation of these options)
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Copyright © 2015 by RT Hawke, Shaun Hawke, Tom Chester, Kate Harper, Walt Fidler, Adrienne Ballwey, and Keir Morse
Permission is freely granted to reproduce any or all of this page as long as credit is given to us at this source:
http://tchester.org/pct/a/a8_flora_trail_order.html
Comments and feedback: Tom Chester
Updated 6 January 2015.