Ted
Caragozian and I got in some good botanizing and good hiking on this
trip, and got to check out the Coyote Creek Second and Third Crossing
area, as well as Boulder Alley.
The flowers were pretty
much the same as on the 11/20/22 trip ten days earlier, with 49
species in bloom, although they weren't exactly the same as the
species in bloom on 11/20/22. We didn't see 14 species that
were in bloom on 11/20/22, but instead saw 12 new species in bloom.
The list of species in bloom is given at the end of this email.
I
posted 68 obs of 43 species, mostly monsoonal plants:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?on=2022-11-30&place_id=95385&user_id=tchester
On the drive to the Horse Camp, there were still
good fields of Pectis and Abronia along both Borrego Springs Road and
the Horse Camp Road.
Ted and I mostly hiked to
Second Crossing, averaging 2.5 mph.
I was surprised
at the appearance of Second Crossing. Second Crossing just
downstream of Coyote Canyon Road always had some happy mule fat
plants, which often were in bloom, such as this one:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/143589445
But that plant now appears to be dead, with no other mule
fat plants I could see:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/143589447
The creek appears to have had significant flow
which took out a lot of the vegetation in the creek bed itself.
Note the bent-over grass stems and mostly cleared-channel in these
posts:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/143455109
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/143455110
When we next encountered the creek just before
Third Crossing, there was another recently-dead mule fat there:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/143522384
The Coyote Creek channel switched to this area a few
years ago or so; perhaps that extra water prolonged over a longer
time interval killed this shrub.
We'd been looking
for catclaw acacia seedlings, to try to find cotyledons and compare
with Ironwood and Palo Verde seedlings, but Senegalia is
strikingly-not common along our route. Just beyond Third
Crossing Ted spotted two young plants that were quite different from
Ironwood and Palo Verde seedlings:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/143539382
See this discussion and links here:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/139585822
I was hoping that the north-facing slopes of
Boulder Alley would be a treasure-trove of fun species, but they
weren't as good as the north-facing slopes of the hills south of
Second Crossing that we explored on 11/20/22. But they were
still had some decent plants such as Perityle:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/143545069
and a scattering of young annuals and some happy shrubs
such as this Trixis:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/143544931
Boulder Alley has reverted to well, boulder alley,
with two sections where only very serious 4 wd vehicles with high
clearance and metal places under the body need apply.
As
we hiked up Boulder Alley, a group of three jeeps passed us going up,
and then again going down. As they were going down, we could
hear the sound of the Jeeps repeatedly bottoming out on the boulders
as they were creeping down. I asked one woman passenger if she
was having fun, and she said "Definitely Not!". (:-)
We saw that they had turned around before reaching the
summit of Boulder Alley, apparently when they decided they had had
enough of the rough road. They must not have known how
different the road was in Collins Valley.
We got to
the summit of Boulder Alley at 2:45 p.m. While I took a 15
minute break to eat, Ted continued into Collins Valley a bit, and
found yellowhead, Trichoptilium in bloom. This was a good find,
since the only other iNat observation of this species in Collins
Valley was a nearby one by Don Rideout.
We mostly
hiked back to the car, and got back there as daylight was fading
away.
List of species in bloom on this trip:
#Pls
in bloom Name
99 Abronia
villosa var. villosa
99 Achyronychia cooperi
99 Allionia incarnata var. incarnata
99
Amaranthus fimbriatus
99 Chamaesyce polycarpa
99 Chamaesyce setiloba
99
Cryptantha angustifolia
99 Datura discolor
99 Ditaxis lanceolata
99
Palafoxia arida var. arida
99 Pectis papposa
var. papposa
50 Cynodon dactylon
30 Psorothamnus emoryi
20
Chenopodium murale
20 Chylismia claviformis
ssp. peirsonii
20 Hilaria rigida
20
Leptochloa fusca ssp. uninervia
20 Perityle
emoryi
10 Encelia farinosa
10
Erigeron canadensis
6 Trichoptilium incisum
5
Bebbia juncea var. aspera
5 Cyperus odoratus
5 Datura wrightii
5
Euphorbia eriantha
5 Fagonia laevis
5
Hyptis emoryi
5 Justicia californica
5
Lepidium lasiocarpum ssp. lasiocarpum
5
Petalonyx thurberi ssp. thurberi
5
Stephanomeria pauciflora
5 Tiquilia palmeri
3 Dithyrea californica
3
Hibiscus denudatus
3 Mirabilis laevis var.
retrorsa
2 Baccharis salicifolia ssp.
salicifolia
2 Croton californicus
2
Krameria bicolor
2 Larrea tridentata
2
Loeseliastrum schottii
2 Physalis crassifolia
1 Adenophyllum porophylloides
1
Bahiopsis parishii
1 Boerhavia triquetra var.
intermedia
1 Eriogonum fasciculatum var.
polifolium
1 Eriogonum inflatum
1
Eulobus californicus
1 Mammillaria dioica
1 Psorothamnus spinosus
It
is always hard to tell whether the following two species were in
bloom, but we saw this many plants with an inflorescence:
99
Aristida adscensionis
99 Bouteloua
aristidoides var. aristidoides
--
tom
chester