Flora of the Quinn Flat / Kenworthy area of Garner Valley, San Jacinto Mountains
Fig. 1. Top row: Abronia villosa var. aurita, hairy sand verbena, taken 14 June 2019, showing the eastern end of Thomas Mountain on the ridgeline. Second row: Lewisia rediviva var. minor, bitter root, taken on 24 April 2017. Third row: Left: Penstemon californicus, California penstemon, taken on 27 April 2016. Right: Boechera johnstonii, Johnston's rock cress, taken on 5 March 2017.
See also Field of goldfields, Lasthenia gracilis, taken on 24 April 2018.
All photographs © Bruce Watts; all rights reserved. Click on the pictures for larger versions.The Quinn Flat / Kenworthy Area is a rich and interesting area for plants despite being a basically-flat area with an elevation range of only 150 feet, from 4450 to 4600 feet, in most of its area, with a small area extending 200 feet higher in elevation, to 4800 feet. Its diversity is due primarily to the low hills of the Bautista Formation, which provide slopes facing all points of the compass, as well as old remnant surfaces that host rare plants such as Boechera johnstonii, Johnston's rock cress; and Penstemon californicus, California penstemon.
The boundary for our Quinn Flat / Kenworthy Area Flora is shown in Fig. 2, along with the areas we have surveyed. The boundary on the northeast was set to include all areas easily accessed from trailheads in the Quinn Flat / Kenworthy area. It turned out that the 4600 foot contour matched well the easily-accessed area from Quinn Flat, but the easily-accessed area near the Kenworthy Fire Station extends to almost 4800 feet, primarily because the elevation along SR74 is 200 feet higher in that area.
Fig. 2. The boundary for the Quinn Flat / Kenworthy Area Flora is outlined in black. The southwestern boundary is SR74, the Palms to Pines Highway. The northeastern boundary is the 4600 foot elevation contour except in the Kenworthy area, where the boundary rises to the 4800 foot elevation contour. Short connections on the northwest and southeast close off the area. The red solid and dashed lines represent some of our surveys in this area. The area to the southwest of SR74 is in the Ramona Trail floral area.
Fig. 3 shows where we have GPS points for species, excluding the GPS points for a few targeted species such as Boechera johnstonii that have hundreds of GPS points. As of 26 May 2018, we have 475 species GPS points. Unfortunately, in our survey of the Kenworthy area on 26 May 2012, no GPS points were taken, so some species observed only in that survey do not yet have GPS points.
Fig. 3. The red dots show the locations where we have taken GPS points for observed species.
The 475 species GPS points are of 258 separate species. 118 species have just a single point; 94 species have two points; and 46 species have three to eight points. We have observed 301 species, so 43 observed species do not yet have GPS points.
Our survey coverage shown in Fig. 2 is much more extensive than represented by the GPS points in Fig. 3, since we generally take only a single point for each species the first time we encounter it. Fig. 3 gives some idea of where the diversity in species are. The combination of Figs. 2 and 3 show where it might be profitable to target future surveys.
See also The 2016 Bruce Watts Census of Boechera johnstonii, Johnston's rock cress.
The Checklist
The following gives some basic information about this checklist.
See:
- Notes on the Scientific Names Used At This Site and
- Information about the links from the Scientific Name and Common Name.
An asterisk before the common name indicates a non-native species.
This list has been compiled from vouchers, and from three surveys done in the Quinn Flat / Kenworthy area specifically to record the taxa seen, as well as literally hundreds of surveys by Bruce Watts to explore the flora of this area.
The column #V gives the number of vouchers, truncated at 9, in the Quinn Flat / Kenworthy area. Due to the imprecision of the locality for some vouchers, some vouchered species are probably not actually present in this area. In particular, the "town" of Kenworthy was formerly present where the community of Thomas Mountain is now, at the mouth of Pipe Creek, which is just outside our floral boundary. Hence some of the vouchers with just Kenworthy in their locality may have been taken from there.
The column labeled #Pls gives a minimum estimate of the number of plants from the field surveys in the area east of Quinn Flat to Kenworthy, up to a maximum of 99 plants, for species seen in the field surveys for which abundances were noted. A few species have no abundance estimates, with an x indicating a species observed by Bruce Watts and JZ a species observed by Jordan Zylstra.
Version for printing, without the other text on this page: html (10 pages) or pdf Clickbook booklet (3 double-sided pages). (See printing instructions for an explanation of these options)
We thank Jordan Zylstra for alerting us to the presence of three species not previously on this list: Petunia parviflora, Verbena bracteata, and Androsace elongata ssp. acuta.We thank Deb Nelson and Joe Woods for helping with the 27 April 2018 survey.
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Copyright © 2016-2020 by Tom Chester (8), Bruce Watts (hundreds), Nancy Accola (4), Mike Crouse (1), Kate Harper (1), RT Hawke (1), Shaun Hawke (1), Keir Morse (1), and Dave Stith (1). The number of surveys is given for each author in parentheses.
Commercial rights reserved. Permission is granted to reproduce any or all of this page, except for the photographs by Bruce Watts, for individual or non-profit institutional internal use as long as credit is given to us at this source:
http://tchester.org/sj/flora/garner_valley_quinn_kenworthy.html
Bruce reserves all rights for his photographs.
Comments and feedback: Tom Chester
Last update: 24 February 2020