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In the quiet confines of Southeastern Contra Costa county lies a seemingly endless expanse of rolling hills filled with California annual grassland vegetation. In some of these valleys, alkaline soils have formed over hundreds of thousands of years, providing habitat for rare California flora. One such known repository of alkaline grassland is along Kellogg creek.
The creek drainage and habitat around it is currently a wind farm, which is planned to be “upgraded” with larger turbines in the near future. EBCNPS provided the following comment letter on the Vasco Winds DEIR, hoping that the alkaline values of this site can be better protected with this “repowering” process. EBCNPS also notes that this falls within the Byron Botanical Priority Protection Area, insert shown below. Although we believe that this habitat contains more rare plants than currently recorded, the project failed to conduct a focused survey for rare plants (as well as locally rare flora) which we believe makes the EIR incomplete and out of compliance with CEQA. EBCNPS is also concerned with how this will affect the ongoing Altamont Wind Power Resource Area HCP, as well as the approved Eastern Contra Costa HCP-NCCP.
The DEIR should be posted by the County here. [Caution this is a large PDF file and may take a while (2-3 minutes) to load.]
Heath Bartosh, EBCNPS Rare Plants Chair, and two other CNPS members recently encountered a rare rock sanicle (Sanicula saxatilis) with reporters from the San Francisco Chronicle. Here’s the full article.
Sanicula saxatilis by Heath Bartosh
“Where’d you go?” called Joe.
“Mmmgrumph. Ow! I’m OK,” said Ron. Translated from couple speak, that’s: “I haven’t tried to work this combination of gravity-defying gymnastics while not stepping on anything precious since I worked in Jenny Fleming’s garden, and I was 25 years younger then and her rocks weren’t this sharp.”
This is Extreme Botany.
Leaving bits of blood and skin to the genius loci, we joined California Native Plant Society botanists Heath Bartosh, Nick Jensen and Shannon Still downslope. Tucked into the rocks were botanical gems: a Mount Diablo phacelia and a scattering of Mount Diablo jewelflowers. Endemic to the mountain, neither had been confirmed at this spot near the summit since the early 1990s.
This was part of the CNPS Rare Plant Treasure Hunt, teaming professional botanists with amateur volunteers statewide in an ambitious effort to document the survival of California’s botanical rarities. In a way, the phacelia and the jewelflower were easy targets, with semi-precise location records. Other plants’ historic locations are vague: “A lot of plants from the late 1800s only have ‘Antioch’ as their collection site, because that’s where the botanists got off the train,” explained Bartosh.
The goal is to update some 30,000 known occurrences of rare plants and record geospatial information for them, for a database maintained by the California Department of Fish and Game. “Thousands of these occurrences, up to 40 percent, haven’t been documented in over 20 years,” said Jensen. Some Diablo species were last recorded by legendary botanist Mary Bowerman in the 1930s. “When you have old data, it’s hard to make accurate decisions about conservation priorities.”
On a shoestring budget, Still is responsible for coordinating treasure hunts over most of California; another CNPS botanist, Amber Swanson, covers the deserts. Current data would help inform planning for solar facilities in the Mojave Desert: “We can find whether some desert plants are as rare as we think they are.”
“If volunteers are inexperienced,” Still told us, “we team them up with someone knowledgeable. Up to half the people we’ve logged so far are amateurs.” The largest response has come from the Bay Area.
Other local groups had already been tracking down rare plants. For the past two years, National Park Service botanist Michael Chassé has led forays in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, from Mori Point in San Mateo County to Nicasio Ridge in Marin County. This year, he’s partnering with the CNPS effort. “The park tries to get people excited and involved about these treasures in a way that continues to protect the resources,” Chassé said. There’s a serendipity factor: His groups have found undocumented occurrences for the San Francisco wallflower and Marin checker lily.
Like the coast, Mount Diablo is home to a concentration of uncommon plant species – some found nowhere else, others at the northern or southern limits of their ranges. “Many plants at the edge of their range are disjunct, found in population islands,” said Jensen. That’s where evolutionary changes are most likely to happen.
After the first finds, we scrambled back up the talus slope and circled the summit on the interpretive trail named for Bowerman. Bartosh flushed a small rattlesnake, who did not have the courtesy to rattle. Bright yellow Mount Diablo sunflowers, banks of red larkspur and orange wind poppy, lustrous white bitterroot flowers and the raspberry-pink blossoms of sickle-leaved onions surrounded us, but Jensen, Still and Bartosh were after less showy specimens.
On a rocky slope below the visitor center, they discovered what Jensen called “the most important of the find of the day”: rock sanicle, a parsley relative with yellow flower clusters and geranium-like leaves. Another Diablo specialty, it was last documented at this spot in 1973. We’d walked the Bowerman trail half a dozen times before; dazzled by the bitterroots, we never noticed the sanicle. Bartosh sprawled on the talus for close-up photography while Still took a GPS reading.
On the way back, as the team coined the “extreme botany” term, we thought of what CNPS education director Josie Crawford had said earlier: “Our hope is that young people will go out and see what a great life professional botanists have.” We’re not young, but we’re sold.
Resources
– California Native Plant Society’s Rare Plant Treasure Hunt page:www.cnps.org/cnps/rareplants/treasurehunt
– Golden Gate National Recreation Area rare plant surveys: michael_chasse@nps.gov
California Tiger Salamander (Gerald and Buff Corsi © 1999 California Academy of Sciences)
The US Fish and Wildlife Service has issued their list of species undergoing the required 5-year review process. This process asks the Service to review current information on the listed species and then decide whether the listing status for a given taxon should be amended.
This year USFWS is reviewing 10 species that are the responsibility of the Sacramento Fish and Wildlife Office. None of the plants fall within the East Bay area, so we will not be commenting in this year. A Federal Register notice published on May 21, 2010 is intended to alert the public to the reviews under way and request all relevant information from the public. Other offices are responsible to review 24 other species that occur in California and Nevada. The full Federal Register notice can be found at: http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2010/pdf/2010-12170.pdf. To give us adequate time to conduct the review, the comment period closes on July 20, 2010.
Although no plant species will need a direct response from our chapter, all of the listed fauna are important conservation targets. The California Tiger Salamander is one such taxon that helps protect vernal pool and vernal swale habitat by acting as an umbrella for rare flora. If anyone has information on the distribution and health of any of the listed species, they are encouraged to write into the Service during the comment period.
Please send comment information to: Field Supervisor, Attention: 5-Year Review, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Sacramento Fish and Wildlife Office, 2800 Cottage Way, Room W-2605, Sacramento, CA 95825. Information may also be submitted electronically at: fw1sfo5year@fws.gov . To obtain further information, contact Kirsten Tarp at the Sacramento office at (916) 414-6600.
Spring is an exciting time, but it’s been a long time since it has been this exciting for Redwood Regional Park. The Serpentine Prairie is now in full bloom. Goldfields, purple needle grass, owl’s clover, and poppies now carpet the upper portion of the prairie which is normally barren by May 1. Thanks should go to the East Bay Regional Park District that fenced off the sensitive serpentine habitat in the fall of 2009. This is the first year for this new stewardship regime.
The results are simply stunning. Please go out and visit the park and see for yourself.
Presidio Clarkia in flower
As we start a new decade, we at East Bay CNPS want to wish everyone a healthy and happy 2010!
Thank you for your efforts towards protecting native flora. Please look for our upcoming 2009 Conservation Committee Annual Report.
Fritillaria agrestis by John Game
The East Bay Chapter of CNPS has been working on a publication that will help communicate the value of our local botanical resources to a greater general public. This project, the Botanical Priority Protection Areas (or BPPA), outlines 15 of the most important landscapes in the East Bay that convey a “sense of place”. Many of these areas will have development proposals in the next decade and we hope that our project will help communicate the importance of these areas.
There is a team of individuals that is helping make this project a success. Please feel free to email Lech Naumovich (conservation@ebcnps.org) with comments and suggestions on this project. Thanks for your everyone’s generosity and support!!!
Here’s a sneak peak at a DRAFT layout of the 4 Valleys area near Antioch, CA.
Typical landscape in the East Bay Hills
The much anticipated “twin goals” plan for the East Bay Hills has been released for public review. This plan looks to reduce wildfire risk and actively manage parkland resources in the East Bay Hills. EBCNPS has been active in providing germane resource information related to this effort. Please read our Environmental Green Paper on East Bay Hills Vegetation Management. EBCNPS will be reviewing the Park District’s plan and providing written comments as appropriate.
East Bay Regional Park District: The EB Hills plan
The first public meeting will be held on Wednesday, September 2, 2009, at 7:00 p.m. at the Trudeau Center, 11500 Skyline Blvd., Oakland. Comments are due by October 1st, 2009.
Just south of the Alameda county line is a rare white Metcalf Canyon jewelflower (pictured below). [Streptanthus albidus ssp albidus]
In the East Bay, we have the purple subspecies of this plant – the “most beautiful jewel flower” [Streptanthus albidus ssp peramoenus].
