It’s been a while since my last post, as I was stuck in Bakersfield wrapping up the semester of teaching. It turns out grading 110 papers and 200 finals leaves little time for nature. I’m off work now, and making up for lost time. My first trip of summer was about half birding and half botanizing, and both components were highly successful. The bird highlights included Hepatic Tanager, Mexican Whip-poor-will, and Brown-crested Flycatcher. The plant highlights…well there are enough of them that I’ll break this into two posts. My first stop was the Chimney Peak Wilderness in the Southeastern Sierras. Rather than my normal routine of short walks and long drives, I decided to do a longer day hike along the Pacific Crest Trail. The main goal here was a rare onion species only found on two mountain-tops in the world. Unfortunately, I failed to bring a detailed map. When I got back, I realized I had walked right past the correct mountain without stopping and instead diligently searched the completely wrong area. I did not add a third location to the species range. Despite the mishap, it was an amazing hike in a beautiful area. Pictured: the incorrect peak.

I found several botanical goodies, including a different, relatively uncommon onion, Allium burlewii (Burlew’s Onion, Alliaceae).

A couple more belly plants–cute, but not particularly showy flowers not more than an inch tall. I did get on my belly to photograph them. Chorizanthe watsonii (Five-tooth spine flower, Polygonaceae), and Mimulus suksdorfii (Suksdorf’s Monkeyflower, Phrymaceae)

I also found another Monkeyflower that, while still quite small, was much more showy: Mimulus montioides (Montia-like Monkeyflower)

On the ridge tops, I found large patches of a little yellow Aster that I didn’t recognize at all. Turns out its in a monotypic genus–the only one of its kind: Orochaenactis thysanocarpha (California Mountain-cushionplant)

Per usual, I found and photographed a few, similiar-looking Phacelia species. There are even more coming in the next blog post, so I’ll just put up the most boring-looking one: Phacelia novenmillensis (Nine-mile Canyon Phacelia, Boraginaceae). Why this one? Well it’s the rarest, of course! It’s only found in about a 20 mile stretch of mountains.

Finally, the clear highlight of the hike was Fritillaria pinetorium (Pinewoods Fritillary, Liliaceae). I actually unsuccessfully looked for this uncommon plant on my last trip. I ran into this (presumably) previously unknown population while scrambling around in the middle of nowhere on that incorrect peak. By itself, it completely made up for the mishap. What a plant!