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Hellhole Palms © Tom Chester (larger version) |
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Maidenhair Falls © Rick Halsey ((larger version) |
Introduction
This page gives just a flora of the Hellhole Canyon Area, updated as of 13 December 2013. The text on this page has not been revised to reflect that, except in the checklist portion.
Hellhole Canyon and Culp Valley are a natural floral unit, since the upper part of Hellhole Canyon is most-easily accessed via Culp Valley. The main access road to Borrego Springs in this area travels through Culp Valley and ends at the bottom of Hellhole Canyon. One of the main hiking trails in this area, the California Riding and Hiking Trail, goes from Culp Valley to the bottom of Hellhole Canyon.
Culp Valley is the first part of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park encountered by visitors traveling along S22 from Ranchita and the Montezuma Valley. You enter Anza-Borrego Desert State Park just before the road crests at the lip of the Salton Sea erosional basin and you travel down the Montezuma Grade. This is a very dramatic way to enter the park, with terrain so challenging that no road was built until S22 was finished in 1964 after ten years of construction.
The first five miles of S22 past the crest, from mile marker 6.5 to 11.6 on S22, is in Culp Valley. There is a popular campground, the Culp Valley Primitive Campground, at a turnoff near mile marker 9.2 on S22. After mile marker 11.6, the road descends into Culp Canyon, and then heads northeast along the east side of the ridge separating Hellhole Canyon from the southern part of Borrego Valley.
Immediately before the final sweeping curve to the right on S22, just before S22 meets Palm Canyon Road (turnoff to Visitor Center) at the base of Hellhole Canyon on the western outskirts of Borrego Springs, there is a large parking lot, with two restrooms, on the left (west side of S22). (See map here.) This is the parking lot for the Hellhole Canyon Trail, and for Little Surprise Canyon, as well as another access point for the California Hiking and Riding Trail.
Hellhole Canyon is one of the more popular areas of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. The five mile roundtrip hike to Maidenhair Falls and the Hellhole Palms, with flowing water most of the year, is the top attraction. The Visitor Center often directs non-hikers to Little Surprise Canyon, right next to the Hellhole Canyon parking area, for a good wildflower show in the spring that can be enjoyed with very little walking.
The lower part of the California Hiking and Riding Trail crosses the base of the Hellhole Canyon alluvial fan, beginning at the southeast corner of the Visitor Center parking lot and crossing the Hellhole Canyon Trail, and traveling up the south wall of Hellhole Canyon to Culp Valley.
This checklist is only a start at the flora of this Canyon, since many of the entries come from vouchers I haven't yet reviewed, and I haven't yet vouchered all of the new records I have found so that my determinations can be reviewed. This checklist can only be considered a decent flora after I finish both of those tasks. This checklist will be revised as I work on both of those tasks.
Location
Hellhole Canyon is west of Borrego Springs; Culp Valley is a flattish valley above the south wall of Hellhole Canyon:
The boundaries of this Flora are shown in more detail in the map below:
The Culp Valley Floral Area includes Culp Valley itself, plus the following areas:
- the area to the west extending up to the lip of its erosional basin at the east edge of Montezuma Valley at ~4600 feet elevation (Ranchita is in the Montezuma Valley).
- the area to the south up to Pinyon Ridge, reaching a peak elevation of 4573 feet at Wilson Peak. The Floral Area boundary is drawn a bit south of the ridgeline, since Pinyon Ridge is accessed by a Jeep Trail from Culp Valley.
- the area to the east down to the 3000 foot elevation contour.
- the area to the north down to the 3000 foot elevation contour, including most of the South Fork of the Hellhole River, accessed by a Jeep Trail from Culp Valley.
Culp Valley itself extends down to 2800 feet elevation, where Culp Canyon begins.
The total elevation range for the Culp Valley Floral Area is 2800 - 4600 feet.
The Hellhole Canyon Flora Area follows the drainage basin of Hellhole Canyon up to an elevation of 3000 feet, extending to the ridge containing Panorama Outlook on the north, the 3000 foot contour in the west and southwest, and following the top of the ridge extending from Culp Valley to Borrego Springs on the southeast. The latter ridge divides the drainage to Hellhole Canyon and the drainage to the portion of the Borrego Valley that is south of Christmas Circle in Borrego Springs.
The total elevation range for the Hellhole Canyon Area is 835 feet at the Visitor Center to 3000 feet.
The following map shows the areas surveyed so far that are included in the checklist below:
Note that very little of Culp Valley has been surveyed so far, being only covered by most of the top part of the California Riding and Hiking Trail.
The checklist below contains separate entries for the species found in each of these areas:
- Little Surprise Canyon, surveyed along the maze of routes shown in the map above. Its flora is also given separately.
- Hellhole Canyon Trail, to a bit beyond Maidenhair Falls and the Hellhole Palms. See also its detailed plant trail guide.
- The California Riding and Hiking Trail, from the Visitor Center to its intersection with the trail from the Culp Valley Primitive Camp, along with the road to S22 from that intersection. Separate entries are given in the checklist below for the top portion of this route, above a saddle at an elevation of 2580 feet, and for the bottom portion. Note that this dividing saddle is not exactly at the boundary between the two floral areas, but it is close.
See also the detailed plant trail guides for the top part and bottom part. Note that these guides are to the entire trail, one for each direction, but the checklist below uses only the part of each guide above and below the 2580 foot saddle. The saddle is at mile 2.38 on the way down, and mile 3.10 on the way up.
Procedure For Compiling The Checklist
The Checklist was compiled from field work done by myself and coworkers, and from online vouchers.
Field Work
The checklist from our field work was compiled using the results up to and including 15 January 2010, which consisted of a total of 17 different full days of field work with a total of 40 people-days. The largest number of trips were done by the following people:
| # field days | Person |
|---|---|
| 17 | Tom Chester |
| 5 | Kay Madore |
| 3 | Mike Crouse |
| 2 | Wayne Armstrong and Paula Knoll |
People devoting one day to a survey were: Adrienne Ballwey, James Dillane, Michael Charters, Jeff Field, Kate Harper, Frank Harris, RT Hawke, Shaun Hawke, Jim Roberts, Aaron Schusteff, Kate Shapiro, Pam Pallette, Vince Balch, Preston Taylor, and Richard Sapiro.
The surveys were all done in the non-prime time of December and January, except for one survey of Hellhole Canyon on 25 March 2005 and one survey of Little Surprise Canyon on 1 April 2008. See the links immediately above for detailed information about the area covered, the dates of coverage, and the participants, for each of the surveyed sections.
The following table gives the number of species found in each area, the total number and the total number fairly confidently identified, along with elevation ranges and miles covered in each survey area, in order of descending elevation of the survey:
| Survey | # miles | Elevation (feet) | # Taxa | # Identified Taxa | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Min | Max | ||||
| California Riding and Hiking Trail Top Part | 2.38 | 2580 | 3520 | 93 | 84 |
| California Riding and Hiking Trail Bottom Part | 3.10 | 835 | 2580 | 111 | 106 |
| Hellhole Canyon Trail | 2.65 | 880 | 2040 | 187 | 182 |
| Little Surprise Canyon | ~2.25 | 880 | 1080 | 97 | 96 |
Because most of the trips were done in December and January, some of the species found could not be fully identified, although they could be distinguished in the field. These species were usually dead plants from the previous year, but sometimes were babies of the current year. Examples are species in the following genera: Datura, Nemacladus, Cryptantha, Lupinus. Observations of those species are not present in the checklist below, which contains only the fairly-confidently-identified taxa. Hence those surveys should not be considered as complete records of all the species in the area surveyed.
Most of these taxa are almost certainly identified correctly, but a small percentage of the fairly-confidently-identified taxa are what I call 95% confidence taxa. These are ones that are highly likely to be the determined taxa, but did not have flowers or fruit to make the determination 100%. One would expect that up to 5% of such species might turn out to be incorrectly identified.
Altogether, 246 separate taxa were found in these surveys.
Vouchers
The vouchers were obtained from searches of the Consortium of California Herbaria on 19 January 2010.
The Consortium database was searched for the subset of vouchers with coordinates using a rectangle with corners of (33.264,-116.456) and (33.231, -116.406) for Hellhole Canyon, and another rectangle with corners of (33.234, -116.504) and (33.174, -116.433) for Culp Valley. In addition, the database was searched for all vouchers, with and without coordinates, containing one of the following words in the locality field: Hellhole, Hell hole, Flatcat, Flat cat, and Culp. Searches were also made using the name of springs in Culp Valley, but no additional vouchers were retrieved.
In addition, a separate search was made for every taxon found in the field surveys that had no vouchers found in either area. This did not result in any additional vouchers for this area, making it likely that the previous searches were highly complete.
Duplicate vouchers were then eliminated. The locality field in each remaining voucher was then manually reviewed, and the vouchers were placed in the Culp Valley Floral Area, the Hellhole Canyon Floral Area, or were discarded if they were from another area. Vouchers from Culp Canyon were discarded, since they are outside the Culp Valley Area defined here.
Two vouchers of Chinese privet, Ligustrum sinense, were removed from further consideration, since they were found only near an old homestead in Culp Valley and this species is not otherwise known to be reproducing in the wild in southern California.
The determination on one voucher of Quercus john-tuckeri was treated as a voucher of Q. cornelius-mulleri, since that is a highly-likely misdetermination.
One voucher, for Cryptantha intermedia from the Hellhole Canyon alluvial fan, was taken to be misdetermined and not included in the voucher list.
A total of 369 vouchers were found, 85 from the Hellhole Canyon Area and 284 from the Culp Valley area.
Altogether, 202 separate taxa were found in these vouchers, 60 from Hellhole Canyon and 167 from Culp Valley.
The top collectors for Hellhole Canyon were:
| # Vouchers | % Vouchers | Collector(s) |
|---|---|---|
| 22 | 26 | Larry Hendrickson |
| 15 | 18 | Carl Epling, Wm. Robison |
| 13 | 15 | R. Mitchel Beauchamp (10 with R. C. Pierce) |
The top collectors for Culp Valley were:
| # Vouchers | % Vouchers | Collector(s) |
|---|---|---|
| 101 | 36 | Frank F. Gander |
| 22 | 8 | Melvin M. Sweet |
| 18 | 6 | Michael G. Simpson |
| 14 | 5 | Bill Sullivan |
| 12 | 4 | CRES Native Seed Gene Bank, J Dunn, L Lippitt, S Anderson |
| 11 | 4 | Richard Mallory |
| 11 | 4 | Suzanne Bell |
| 10 | 4 | C. W. Tilforth, John Dourley |
| 10 | 4 | Kim Marsden, with Ruth Otis, R. Ehly, G. Clark, M. J. Churchwell |
Important Caveats
Please note the following important caveats about this preliminary Checklist:
- I have not looked at any of the vouchers yet, so I cannot vouch for their determinations. I have checked only the names of the taxa to make sure it was not unreasonable for them to occur here.
- Some taxa present in the checklist only from our observations have not been 100% identified yet, since they were never observed in bloom.
- Several of the surveyed areas are incomplete for annuals and perennials, since they have not yet been covered at prime time.
- This checklist is very incomplete for Culp Valley, since no dedicated survey has ever been done there in prime time. (Our single survey trail there was covered only in January so far.) Most of the entries come from widely-scattered vouchers, and most of the area of Culp Valley has not been botanized. (See the numbers below.)
- The checklist is somewhat incomplete for Hellhole Canyon, since most of the Canyon has not been covered by surveys in prime time. However, this checklist is a good start toward its flora, since several areas there have been covered in prime time.
- 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 Hellhole Canyon
I make the working list available online for two reasons. First, I know others will appreciate having such a list, even if it is preliminary. Second, I hope I will get feedback from others who find errors or omissions in this list.
The Checklist follows the 2012 Jepson Manual Second Edition with only a few exceptions.
The Checklist is sorted first by the eight evolutionary categories (clades) used in the 2012 Second Edition Jepson Manual - lycophytes, ferns, etc., to eudicots and monocots - and then by family and scientific name. The clades are labeled in the Checklist. Note that this changes the order of presentation of the taxa from that of the 1993 First Edition.
The family name is abbreviated to the first six characters in order to save space in the table rows.
An asterisk before the Common Name indicates a non-native taxon.
The column labeled #Pls gives a minimum estimate of the number of plants from the field surveys, up to a maximum of 99 plants, for species seen in the field surveys for which abundances were noted.
The column labeled #V gives the number of vouchers in Henderson Canyon.
The scientific name is linked to the latest online Jepson Manual description for each species, which also gives the months in which each species flowers. That link also gives a map of where the species occurs in California; a plot of elevation vs. latitude for California; and a histogram of the voucher collections by month.
A few species may not have working links, if their names have been updated more recently (such as Mimulus diffusus, which is still listed under M. palmeri in the online flora), or if they are reserved-judgment taxa which are listed in the entry for another taxon name. However, as of 16 January2013, the Jepson Manual links have all been updated to link to the parent species for the taxa without their own entries. Taxa linked to anything other than the Jepson Manual link for the full scientific name used below have been indicated with a ^ after the scientific name, and are discussed here.
The common name for most species in the checklist is linked to Calphotos to give pictures of most taxa. Of course, there is no guarantee that the Calphotos pictures are correctly identified.
Note that the link will not always return pictures, since not every species has pictures at Calphotos, and a number of species still have their Calphotos pictures under the Jepson Manual First Edition Names. Some links have been made to the Calphotos pictures using the First Edition Jepson Manual name, if there are no pictures under the Second Edition name. Of course, that may result in a link with no pictures if those the names of those Calphotos pix are updated in the future to the Second Edition names.
Note also that the links below will return only the specified taxon at Calphotos, and not any subtaxa; i.e., a link to Cryptantha barbigera will not return photos of Cryptantha barbigera var. barbigera. There may be additional pictures at Calphotos under a different scientific name such as the First Edition Jepson Manual name.
Some links, such as for Bochera perennans, go to special pages with more information on those species.
As of 14 January 2013, the picture links have all been updated to link to a page that has pictures. Taxa linked to anything other than the Calphotos page of their full scientific name used below have been indicated with a ^ after the common name.
If you find any links from either the scientific or common names below that do not work, please let us know so we can update them.
The first column after the common name is the number of vouchers in the Hellhole Canyon Area, column header #V.
The next columns give the minimum number of plants observed in each area, up to a maximum of 99. The column headers are:
- RH: The California Riding and Hiking Trail from the Visitor Center to the Saddle at 2580 feet elevation.
- LS: Little Surprise Canyon
- Up: Hellhole Canyon above Maidenhair Falls
- Lo: Hellhole Canyon up to Maidenhair Falls
Version for printing, without lines and other text on this page: html (8 pages) or pdf Clickbook booklet (2 double-sided pages). (See printing instructions for an explanation of these options)