Flora of Puma Canyon Ecological Reserve, southeast of Pinon Hills
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| Fig. 1. Left: Canbya candida, pygmy poppy, with a penny in the background for scale. Right: Opuntia basilaris var. brachyclada, short-joint beavertail. Pictures taken by Tom Chester on 14 April 2015. Click on the pictures for larger versions. | |
The 320 acre Puma Canyon Ecological Reserve is an achievement of the Transition Habitat Conservancy, which has protected a total of over 6000 acres in the Mojave Desert.
The checklist for the reserve is young and hence quite incomplete, compiled from only the following visits so far, from:
- A CNPS trip on 22 May 2010, compiled by Pam MacKay, Tom Egan, Tim Thomas and RT Hawke, which found a total of 96 confidently-identified species, along with eight other species that could not be reliably identified on that date due to lack of blooms, etc.
- A survey by Tom Chester, RT Hawke, Wendy Walker and Harry Spilman on 14 April 2015, on the largest parcel of the Reserve, which found a total of 107 confidently-identified species, along with three other species that similarly could not be reliably identified at the time.
- A survey by Tom Chester, RT Hawke, Wendy Walker, Nancy Accola, Adrienne Ballway, Michael Charters, Walt Fidler, Frank Harris, and Shaun Hawke on 26 April 2015, in the Sheep Creek Parcel and nearby areas. This survey found a total of 97 confidently-identified species in the Reserve area, along with two other species that could not be reliably identified at the time, as well as nine species that were found outside the area of the Reserve.
- Surveys by Michael Charters on 1, 4, 6, 21 and 28 May 2015.
See the 14 and 26 April 2005 survey routes on an area map.
The union of the field surveys contains 155 taxa, including five taxa that are not yet confidently determined. An additional six taxa are given in the checklist below that were found in the Sheep Creek Wash area outside the Reserve parcel. Because only a small part of the entire 320 acres has been surveyed so far, and the surveyed areas have each only been covered once, it is certain that the list will grow with time as more surveys are done.
Michael Charters has made a beautiful photo gallery of 114 species from his visits in 2015. His gallery includes one species that we couldn't identify, and hence is not in the checklist given below. If you can identify it (it is at the bottom of page 9), please let us know!
In an attempt to make the following checklist more complete for future fieldwork, vouchers were searched at the Consortium of California Herbaria on 19 April 2015 in a larger area of similar habitat. First, a geographic coordinate search was made at the consortium using a latitude-longitude box larger than the area desired (note that this of course does not retrieve vouchers that have not been georeferenced). Then only the vouchers in the area south of SR138, north of the base of the San Gabriel Mountains, east of Puzzle Canyon, and west of the hills immediately west of SR2 were selected. Fig. 2 shows the locations of the accepted vouchers, along with an approximate rendition of the areas surveyed on 14 and 26 April 2015.
Fig. 2. An area map showing the number of vouchers at various locations (colored circles with numbers inside, from the clustering algorithm used by the Consortium of California Herbaria), with yellow circles showing locations with more than 10 vouchers and blue circles showing locations with fewer vouchers. The approximate routes surveyed on 14 and 26 April 2015 were drawn in by hand (heavy blue line; see more precise survey routes on the topo map). Note that no georeferenced vouchers have ever been collected along the route surveyed. The Angeles Crest Highway (SR2) is the white highway line at extreme lower left and at bottom right. The town of Wrightwood is just of the bottom edge of the map, with Cajon Pass just off the lower right edge of the map.
One species, Lessingia germanorum, was rejected from the voucher list as being probably misdetermined, since it is an extremely rare species found only at two small locations in San Francisco and San Mateo County.
The vouchers of another species, Mimulus bigelovii, are possibly actually of M. fremontii; see the discussion of the vouchers of Mimulus bigelovii and M. fremontii. See that page for photographs of the M. fremontii from the Puma Reserve, and a discussion of how to distinguish it from M. bigelovii.
A total of 152 taxa were found in the 375 accepted vouchers.
The vouchers are almost entirely the work of one person: Dick Swinney. He collected 312 out of the 375 vouchers, an amazing 83% of the total. Without Dick's work, very few additional species would have been added to the following checklist from the voucher search.
The total checklist below contains 223 taxa, 155 definitely known from the Reserve, with some, but not all, of the other 68 taxa expected to be found in the Reserve. It is also likely that future surveys of the reserve will find species not present in the voucher list.
The total checklist is very unusual in that there are no lycophytes or ferns!
The last three columns in the checklist below are as follows:
- The first gives the number of vouchers found in the search area, in the column with header #V.
- Two columns, under the header #Plants, give our estimate of the minimum abundance for each species we saw from the surveys of, separately, the main reserve and the Sheep Creek parcel, up to a maximum of 99 plants, except as indicated below.
- The column with header Main is for the surveys of the Main Parcel, including the 4/14/15 survey, the Michael Charters separate surveys, and the Pam MacKay et al CNPS survey. A PM in that column indicates a species found only in that area by the CNPS survey, where no estimate of the plant abundances were made.
- The column with header ShCr is for the Sheep Creek parcel and surrounding area from the 4/26/15 survey. An N in that column indicates a taxon observed only outside the Reserve parcel. A WF in the column (for Walt Fidler et al) indicates a species observed but not known whether it was inside or outside the Reserve parcel.
The species with uncertain determinations in the field have a qualifier in these columns, ~ for our best-guess determination and sp if the species is completely uncertain, with one vouchered Nemacladus species name just a place-holder for the observation of the genus in that case.
Version for printing, without lines and other text on this page: html (6 pages) or pdf Clickbook booklet (2 double-sided pages). (See printing instructions for an explanation of these options)
See also the beautiful photo gallery of 114 species from Michael Charters.