Don
Rideout and I went to Split Mtn Gorge in order to look for the
Eucnide vouchered from "a small side canyon of Split Mountain,
north of anticline", and also so that Don and I could get an
iNat obs of Hoffmannseggia microphylla (=Caesalpinia virgata), wand
holdback, since we had never posted that species at iNat.
There
were 11 iNat obs of the wand holdback in Fish Creek from Split
Mountain to where Fish Creek meets Split Mtn Road, so I thought we'd
easily see some on our drive to the anticline.
That
turned out to be wildly incorrect. We saw NO wand holdbacks on
our slow drive in, including at the iNat locations we checked in the
gorge. What we saw instead were barren, washed-out places where
strong water flow in the past had wiped the main wash clean of
plants. There was debris something like one foot above the
ground in some of the plants on the banks of the wash. Fred and
Carla wrote on one of the iNat posts, after I commented that the
plant in that obs was now gone, that this plant was gone as of a year
ago, so the strong water flow that took these plants out did not
happen in the last six months.
As we drove in, we stopped
for plants in a handful of locations, including side drainages that
might have the Eucnide. We saw a small number of species in
bloom, including a ghost flower and Lupinus arizonicus, but no
Eucnide and no wand holdback.
We parked just below the
Anticline, and immediately tried to recover an iNat wand holdback
plant there. It was gone, too.
Btw, if anyone knows
where the common name of "wand holdback" comes from, please
let me know.
We were very pleased we were able to
drive all the way to the anticline with no problems. There was
a big sign on Split Mountain Road, saying "Road Closed Ahead",
but that was probably referring to where that Road entered the
quarry. Any 2 wd drive car could easily have driven this far.
We were also a bit worried about whether the rain so far
this year might have created problems for the wash road, but the only
problem is that the rain tends to obliterate the usual path that
vehicles take, so at times the road was ill-defined.
In
fact, the main problem with the road was its washboarding. Almost no
soft sand at all; instead it felt like my brain was being shaken out
of my head! (:-)
When we got out of the car,
there was a lone hiker going back to the car parked near the paved
road. When I asked her if she had seen anything interesting,
she looked at me like I was a slow learner, so I quickly clarified I
meant plant-wise. (:-)
She was coming back from the
Elephant Knees.
The geology of this area is nicely
explained in Remeika and Lindsay, Lindsay and Lindsay, as well as a
bit in Schad. Basically, the anticline is the result of a massive
rock landslide that occurred into a shallow sea 5 million years ago
from something like seven (7!!!) mile away, which folded and
contorted the sandstone sediments in the sea. This area also
has the oldest marine sediments deposited in the newly-formed Salton
Detachment Zone. See Remeika and Lindsay, and Dorsey's papers.
We then turned our attention to the Xylorhiza at
the anticline that was made famous by Fred and Carla's realization in
2016 that this plant probably appears in lots of historical photos.
This plant was still there, and I took the time to put some of the
historical photos online in our Xylorhiza page:
http://tchester.org/bd/species/asteraceae/xylorhiza_orcuttii.html#anticline
This plant is at least 20 years old, and has survived the
worst drought in the last 500 or so years in southern California!
But clearly the drought has taken a toll on it; it was at its best in
2004.
If any of you have pix of this plant from times we
don't have, especially ones prior to 2004, please let me know.
We
then started our very slow search for Eucnide at 1:00 p.m. We
poked into every side drainage we saw, at least until they became
hard to traverse, or we saw that there were no more plants farther up
them. In fact, most of the canyon walls had no plants at all
growing on them, both in the main canyon and in the side canyons.
We surveyed on the west side of the gorge on our way
north, and on the east side on our way back.
Almost
immediately we spotted a borage (like a Cryptantha) that I didn't
recognize, that was just starting to produce very small buds. I
had no hopes to trying to identify this without flowers and fruit, so
I was just hoping that this had been observed by some else when it
was mature.
My post:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/146716221
A bit over an hour later, Don found some plants of
this same species that were not only in bloom, but had immature
fruit! Those immature fruit, however, were a good example of Kay
Madore's claim that plants actively try to fool us. (:-)
See the discussion here:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/146489969
It was a delight to find a number of plants of
Malperia all along our survey route, including one in bloom at the
same location with the J. holoptera in bloom. Don's posts:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/146732225
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/146512903
We had previously decided to turn around at 2:30
p.m. to survey the other side of the canyon, and get back to the car
in time to look for more wand holdback above the gorge.
On
the way back, we found an area that had 22 seedling Xylorhiza
plants. My post:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/146660877
We got back to the car at 3:30 p.m., but without
finding any evidence of Eucnide. There were plenty of places
with Perityle, but despite us looking at those places really hard,
there was no Eucnide.
After a snack, we then
started hiking south to exit the gorge. There were a number of iNat
obs of wand holdback there, as well.
When we exited the
gorge, we went to a bench a bit elevated above the stream bed, and
fairly quickly found a very unhappy plant that was at least present.
My post:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/146644816
Don's post:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/146573597
We did a little loop above the gorge, with the main
find being a single beautiful plant of Langloisia, with some color
variation in the open flowers.
My post:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/146728332
Don's post:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/146573394
We saw some sand verbena plants there, but some of
them didn't look very happy, probably because they were growing in
decomposed sandstone instead of nice thick sand beds. A few
others did look pretty happy. My posts:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/146728334
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/146732983
We also spotted five desert lily vegetative plants.
Don's post:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/146574436
That area didn't look like a candidate to do any
further exploring this year. Here's one of my pix of how bleak
the area looked:
http://tchester.org/temp/230112/view_just_above_gorge_3_30.jpg
Many of the bushes in the middle of the photo are
cheesebushes, which were lush and green in places in the gorge and
farther down Fish Creek, but not here.
I've not
done justice in this report to the geology here. Here are some
pix by Don showing how beautiful the gorge is.
Just
before entering the top of the gorge on the way back:
http://tchester.org/temp/230112/rideout/entering_top_of_gorge_35.jpg
Just inside the top of the gorge:
http://tchester.org/temp/230112/rideout/just_inside_top_of_gorge_35.jpg
A bit below that, with me giving the scale of the gorge:
http://tchester.org/temp/230112/rideout/tom_just_inside_top_of_gorge_30.jpg
For completeness, here's Don's pix from earlier in
the day, looking back just after we had entered the bottom of the
gorge:
http://tchester.org/temp/230112/rideout/looking_back_after_entering_gorge_25.jpg
We hiked back to the car, and drove to the
remaining wand holdback iNat locations we hadn't checked on the way.
We were skunked at all of them except for the very last one, which
still had a very happy plant. We were delighted to see at least
one good-looking plant of this species still here.
Don's
post:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/146574791
My post:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/146644818
On our entire trip in the Split Mountain area,
including our car stops, we saw a total of 35 species in bloom, but
not very many plants of all species except Perityle. The list
of the plants in bloom is at the bottom of this email.
Don
and I posted a total of 80 obs of 46 species from this day:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?on=2023-01-12&place_id=95385&user_id=lagoondon,tchester
Don posted 55 obs of 44 species; I posted 25 obs of 13
species.
Other details:
On our
drive from Fallbrook to Ocotillo Wells, there were very few plants in
bloom, just ~5 plants of bladderpod in Sentenac Gorge, and a few
chuparosa after exiting the Gorge.
We stopped at
The Narrows Earth Trail to check on the Tiquilia canescens plants
there, and they looked sorry, indeed. I was shocked at how dried up
these plants were here. It was like I was transported back to a
drought year in the desert, especially compared to how lush some
other areas were.
My post, which contains a link to Don's
posts:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/146588828
The plants along the roadsides looked equally bleak
until we got to Ocotillo Wells, where the sand verbena was providing
good color still. But they quickly disappeared as we drove up
Split Mountain Road, where it looked pretty bleak again.
List
of species in bloom:
#Pls in bloom Name
99 Perityle emoryi
20
Johnstonella angustifolia
15 Astragalus
crotalariae
15 Johnstonella holoptera
10
Abronia villosa var. villosa
10 Chylismia
claviformis ssp. peirsonii
10 Cryptantha
maritima
10 Plantago ovata
10
Tidestromia suffruticosa oblongifolia
5
Aliciella latifolia
5 Brassica tournefortii
5 Condea emoryi
5
Geraea canescens
5 Palafoxia arida var. arida
5 Xylorhiza orcuttii
2
Cistanthe ambigua
2 Eriogonum inflatum
2 Eriogonum thomasii
2 Lupinus arizonicus
2
Mohavea confertiflora
2 Ottleya strigosa
2 Phacelia crenulata minutiflora
2
Physalis crassifolia
1 Allionia
incarnata
1 Dalea mollis
1
Ditaxis serrata
1 Encelia farinosa
1
Euphorbia polycarpa
1 Hoffmannseggia
microphylla
1 Isocoma acradenia var.
eremophila
1 Langloisia setosissima ssp.
setosissima
1 Lepidium lasiocarpum var.
lasiocarpum
1 Mirabilis laevis retrorsa
1
Pectis papposa var. papposa
1 Pleurocoronis
pluriseta
--
tom
chester
r
