Flora of Hidden Lake Drainage Basin, San Jacinto Mountain

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Introduction
Location
Procedure For Compiling The Checklist
Important Caveats
Checklist

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Introduction

Hidden Lake is a vernal pool at San Jacinto Mountain at an elevation of about 8700 feet. The pool fills with water in spring in normal rainfall years, and then dries up during the summer. As the pool recedes, very specialized plants grown along the margins of the water.

This is a flora of the Hidden Lake Drainage Basin, compiled from vouchers and from our fieldwork. It includes species found in the Lake itself, as well as species found in the surrounding territory that drains to the Lake, an area of about 0.25 miles north-south and 0.20 miles east-west. The total area is about 0.05 square miles (=33 acres = 13.5 hectares). See the map below for the boundaries of the drainage basin.

So far, no non-native species have been found in this area.

If you go to Hidden Lake, please do not trample the plant species along the margins of the Lake! Footprints from visitors can easily take a huge toll among these very specialized plants that live only here, by killing them directly by your boots and indirectly by changing the soil texture of their home. Staying away from the lake margins, and heading to Desert View on the well-established path, is the best way to respect the plants living here and allow them to continue to thrive in this special location. The plants are quite uniform around the entire lake, and hence you will see almost all the species by staying on the well-established path.

Location

Hidden Lake is located 0.9 air miles south of the upper tram station, at the lower right corner of the following map. The dashed line shows the margins of the Hidden Lake Drainage Basin.

Procedure For Compiling The Checklist

The Checklist was compiled from online vouchers and from field work done by the authors on 25 June 2008.

The vouchers were obtained from combining two searches of the Consortium of California Herbaria on 27 June 2008, a search for Lake Surprise and a search for Hidden Lake. Only vouchers that appeared to be from the drainage area were kept; vouchers given with localities such as trail on way to Hidden Lake were ignored. A total of 39 taxa were vouchered.

The field work on 25 June 2008 found 29 positively-identified taxa, as well as two other species that could not yet be determined due to lack of flowers or fruit (a Gayophytum sp. lacking fruit and what is probably Penstemon labrosus lacking flowers). These two other species are not given in the total list below.

The total list includes 51 taxa.

Important Caveats

Please note the following important caveats about this preliminary Checklist:

• We have not looked at any of the vouchers yet, so we cannot vouch for their determinations. We have checked only the names of the taxa to make sure it was not unreasonable for them to occur here.

• This is a very preliminary first draft Checklist, compiled quickly and without review by other knowledgeable botanists, and so well may contain bonehead errors.

Checklist for Hidden Lake Drainage Basin

The Checklist is sorted first by category - ferns, dicots, and monocots - and then by family and scientific name. The Family and Scientific Name are from the Jepson Manual. An asterisk before the Common Name indicates a non-native taxon.

There are three columns that follow the names for each taxa. The first column gives a rough estimate of the number of plants, and the number of locations for each species, for taxa seen in our field survey. Maximum values are 99 plants, and 9 locations. The main intent of this column is to indicate the species for which we found very few plants or locations.

The second column (HL) denotes those taxa found within the margin of the highest waterline of the lake. There is some uncertainty about whether species known only from vouchers whose locality is just Hidden Lake were actually found within the lake margins or not. We've used our judgment as to which of those probably were found within the lake.

The third column (V) gives the number of vouchers found in the Hidden Lake Drainage Basin from the procedure detailed above.

This is a working list, about which we make no guarantees at all until we officially release it. Use at your own risk!

Version for printing, without lines and other text on this page: html (2 pages) or pdf Clickbook booklet (1 double-sided page). (See printing instructions for an explanation of these options)

#	JM Family	Scientific Name	(*)Common Name	# Plants/ Locations	HL	V
1	Pinaceae	Abies concolor	white fir	20/9
2	Pinaceae	Pinus contorta ssp. murrayana	lodgepole pine	20/9		V
3	Pinaceae	Pinus jeffreyi	Jeffrey pine	20/9
4	Pinaceae	Pinus lambertiana	sugar pine	20/9
5	Asteraceae	Chrysothamnus nauseosus ssp. bernardinus	San Bernardino rubber rabbitbrush	10/2
6	Asteraceae	Gnaphalium palustre	western marsh cudweed	99/9	HL	V
7	Asteraceae	Hieracium horridum	prickly hawkweed			V
8	Boraginaceae	Cryptantha micrantha	purple-root cryptantha	50/5	HL	V
9	Caryophyllaceae	Sagina decumbens ssp. occidentalis	western pearlwort		HL	V
10	Crassulaceae	Crassula aquatica	aquatic pygmy-weed	99/9	HL	V
11	Elatinaceae	Elatine brachysperma	short-seed waterwort		HL	V
12	Ericaceae	Arctostaphylos patula	green-leaf manzanita	10/2
13	Ericaceae	Pyrola picta	white-veined wintergreen			V
14	Ericaceae	Sarcodes sanguinea	snow-plant			V
15	Fabaceae	Lotus nevadensis var. nevadensis	Sierra Nevada lotus	99/9	HL	V
16	Fabaceae	Lupinus hyacinthinus	San Jacinto lupine	1/1		V
17	Fagaceae	Chrysolepis sempervirens	bush chinquapin	10/2
18	Fagaceae	Quercus chrysolepis	canyon live oak	3/1
19	Lamiaceae	Salvia pachyphylla	rose sage			V
20	Lamiaceae	Trichostema austromontanum ssp. compactum	Hidden Lake bluecurls	99/9	HL	V
21	Onagraceae	Gayophytum decipiens	deceiving gayophytum			V
22	Philadelphaceae	Philadelphus microphyllus	little-leaf mock orange	1/1		V
23	Polemoniaceae	Leptodactylon jaegeri	San Jacinto prickly phlox			V
24	Polemoniaceae	Leptodactylon pungens	granite prickly phlox			V
25	Polygonaceae	Eriogonum wrightii var. subscaposum	Wright's buckwheat			V
26	Portulacaceae	Calyptridium parryi var. parryi	Parry's sand cress	20/1	HL	V
27	Rosaceae	Cercocarpus ledifolius var. ledifolius	curl-leaf mountain-mahogany	1/1
28	Rubiaceae	Galium parishii	Parish's bedstraw			V
29	Scrophulariaceae	Keckiella rothrockii var. jacintensis	San Jacinto Mts. keckiella	20/9		V
30	Scrophulariaceae	Limosella acaulis	stemless mudwort	99/9	HL	V
31	Scrophulariaceae	Mimulus breweri	Brewer's monkeyflower	99/9	HL	V
32	Scrophulariaceae	Mimulus pilosus	false monkeyflower	50/9	HL
33	Scrophulariaceae	Mimulus suksdorfii	Suksdorf's monkeyflower	99/9	HL
34	Scrophulariaceae	Veronica peregrina ssp. xalapensis	purslane speedwell	99/9	HL	V
35	Cyperaceae	Carex multicostata	many-ribbed sedge		HL	V
36	Cyperaceae	Carex subfusca	brown sedge	5/2
37	Cyperaceae	Cyperus squarrosus	bearded flatsedge		HL	V
38	Cyperaceae	Eleocharis acicularis var. acicularis	needle spikerush	99/9	HL	V
39	Cyperaceae	Eleocharis acicularis var. bella	needle spikerush		HL	V
40	Cyperaceae	Eleocharis macrostachya	common spikerush	99/9	HL	V
41	Cyperaceae	Lipocarpha occidentalis	western hemicarpha		HL	V
42	Juncaceae	Juncus bufonius var. bufonius	toad rush	99/9	HL	V
43	Juncaceae	Juncus duranii	Duran's rush		HL	V
44	Juncaceae	Juncus mexicanus	Mexican rush	99/9	HL
45	Juncaceae	Juncus triformis	Yosemite dwarf rush		HL	V
46	Poaceae	Agrostis idahoensis	Idaho bentgrass		HL	V
47	Poaceae	Agrostis scabra	rough bentgrass		HL	V
48	Poaceae	Elymus elymoides ssp. elymoides	squirreltail			V
49	Poaceae	Muhlenbergia filiformis	pullup muhly		HL	V
50	Poaceae	Muhlenbergia minutissima	annual muhly		HL	V
51	Potamogetonaceae	Potamogeton diversifolius	diverse-leaved pondweed	50/9	HL	V

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Voucher data provided by the participants of the Consortium of California Herbaria (ucjeps.berkeley.edu/consortium/).

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• Plants of Southern California: Regional Floras