Flora of Granite Mountain, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park
Introduction Granite Mountain is a fairly-well-isolated large mountain that towers over the San Felipe Valley to the north, and Mason Valley to the south. It spans 6.5 miles east-west, and 4.0 miles north-south. It is on the immediate east of the Laguna Escarpment, southeast of Julian and Banner, and shares many montane species with those neighbors on its western side. It is on the immediate west of Shelter / Earthquake / Blair Valley, and shares many desert species with those neighbors on its eastern side.
We have long wanted to do a flora of the different sides of Granite Mountain, to document how the flora changes with cardinal direction. The checklist here is a first attempt to produce a flora of Granite Mountain. The flora is almost certain to be quite incomplete since much of Granite Mountain is very steep and difficult to access.
This list comes from:
- vouchers from all sides of Granite Mountain, obtained from searches on 5-24 March 2014 of the Consortium of California Herbaria using coordinates and localities.
The following is only for the southeast side; it will be updated in the future for all vouchers.
The top collector by far was Larry Hendrickson, whose name was on 289 of the 730 vouchers, 40% of the total. Philip Munz was next, with his name on 92 vouchers, 13% of the total. Carl Epling (70), Frank Gander (48) and Victor Duran (45) are the other top five collectors.
The following species were rejected from the list for the stated reasons:
- Ephedra viridis. The voucher was of a male plant, which cannot be reliably determined. The expected species here is E. aspera. Jon Rebman checked the voucher on 2 January 2014 and changed the determination to E. aspera.
- Ephedra nevadensis. When Tom asked Jon about these vouchers, Jon looked at them and found that all of them were also male plants. There is no evidence at the moment that E. nevadensis exists in San Diego County.
- Ephedra trifurca. This is almost surely a misdetermined voucher, since this species lives in dry sand dune areas, with the closest known locations in Imperial County. One duplicate of this voucher is determined as E. californica, a much-more-likely determination.
- a field survey on 3 March 2014 of 2.0 miles of Hornblende Canyon, by Tom Chester, Kate Harper, Adrienne Ballwey, Ted Caragozian, RT Hawke, and Shaun Hawke. Kate also botanized Hornblende Canyon on 25 February 2014 on a fast-paced hike and found a few species then that we didn't record on 3 March 2014. The route covered is shown in blue in Fig. 1.
Our survey of Hornblende Canyon covered the first 2.0 miles, elevations 2400 to 3100 feet.
- a field survey on 7 March 2014 of 1.6 miles of Cool Canyon, by Tom Chester, Kate Harper, RT Hawke, and Shaun Hawke.
Our survey of Cool Canyon covered 1.6 miles, consisting of 0.93 miles of the main canyon up to the junction with the uppermost tributary on the right; 0.15 miles of the tributary from the west; and 0.55 miles of the uppermost tributary on the right, elevations 2600 to 3400 feet.
- a field survey on 12 March 2014 of 2.0 miles of the south-flowing drainage the ends just north of the mouth of Oriflamme Canyon, by Tom Chester, Kate Harper, Adrienne Ballwey, and Jim Roberts.
- two field surveys by RT and Shaun Hawke of the PCT. The first was on the four miles south of Scissors Crossing on 2 March 2013. The second was on the 9.2 miles of the PCT from the Rodriguez Truck Trail to Scissors Crossing on 5 May 2013.
The field surveys were done in a very dry year, so many annual species were missing, and the number of plants observed for annual species that were present are undoubtedly very much lower than would be observed in a wetter year.
The union of the above lists contains 329 taxa.
Checklist for Granite Mountain This particular version of the Granite Mountain flora is optimized for the PCT section from Rodriguez Canyon Road to Scissors Crossing, for use in fieldwork on 12 April 2014.
The column with the header PCT gives the order in which RT and Shaun Hawke encountered each species on the PCT going north from Rodriguez Canyon, for species numbered 1 to 59, and the order in which additional species were encountered on the PCT going south from Scissors Crossing, for species numbered 101 to 171. If there is text immediately before the number, it indicates there is uncertainty about the determination to subspecies (ssp); species (sp); or genus (?). A ~ indicates a likely id, but not a certain determination.
Species without an entry in that column were found either in our surveys of other areas of Granite Mountain, or from vouchers.
Version for printing, without lines and other text on this page: html (10 pages) or pdf Clickbook booklet (2 double-sided pages). (See printing instructions for an explanation of these options)
Voucher data provided by the participants of the Consortium of California Herbaria (ucjeps.berkeley.edu/consortium/).
Carla Hoegen and Fred Melgert found Phacelia affinis in Cool Canyon on 9 April 2014, adding that species to the checklist.
Go to:
Copyright © 2014 by Tom Chester (4), Kate Harper (4), RT Hawke (3.5), Shaun Hawke (3.5), Adrienne Ballwey (3), Jim Roberts (1), Ted Caragozian (1), and Frank Harris (1). The number of surveys done by each author is given in parentheses after the author name.
Permission is freely granted to reproduce any or all of this page as long as credit is given to us at this source:
http://tchester.org/sd/plants/floras/granite_mtn.html
Comments and feedback: Tom Chester
Last update: 4 May 2014