Flora of May Valley Road Area, San Jacinto Mountains
Fig. 1. The May Valley Road area. The red dots are GPS points for plants from our surveys as of 31 October 2019. This floral area also includes the Coldwater Creek area above SR243.
This checklist includes the Johnson Meadow area; the area along the May Valley Road; and the May Valley area, including the public area surrounding the Fleming Ranch. Only a small fraction of the area here has been surveyed or vouchered; every new survey trip has resulted in the addition of 15 to 30 species to the flora, indicating that this flora is far from complete.
A number of species probably resulted from fire-followers after the Mountain Fire of July 2013 and the Cranston Fire of 25 July 2018. This area was nearly completely burned by both of those fires.
This checklist was compiled from a voucher search of the Consortium of California Herbaria on 26 September 2019; and the following field surveys:
- Tom Chester, Dave Stith, Keir Morse, Jordan Zylstra, and Deb Nelson on 4 May 2013, of a small area between the Bonita Vista Road and the Fleming Ranch (just noting a few species)
- Tom Chester and Dave Stith on 12 November 2014, of a short section of the Upper May Valley Road (no abundance estimates)
- Bruce Watts and Lance Woolley on 29 June 2019, of the Fleming Ranch area (abundance estimates for plants in bloom)
- Bruce Watts and Lance Woolley on 1 July 2019, of the Johnson Meadow area (abundance estimates for plants in bloom)
- Tom Chester on 27 September 2019, of the Lower May Valley Road / Johnson Meadow Road area
- Tom Chester and Nancy Accola on 3 October 2019, of the Johnson Meadow area
- Tom Chester, Nancy Accola, Don Rideout, and David Harris on 8 October 2019, of the Bonita Vista Road / Fleming Ranch Road area
- Tom Chester and Don Rideout on 14 October 2019, of the Upper May Valley Road area.
- Tom Chester, Nancy Accola, and Don Rideout on 19 October 2019, of the Upper May Valley Road area.
- Tom Chester and Don Rideout on 27 October 2019, of a mountain bike trail north of the Upper May Valley Road area.
- Tom Chester on 11 May 2020 of the Lower May Valley Road area.
- Tom Chester on 2 June 2020 of the Upper May Valley Road area.
Fig. 2 shows where the vouchers were georeferenced, which is often just a guess from a vague locality on the voucher, especially older ones.
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| Fig. 2. Left: Map showing where vouchers were georeferenced. As an example of the errors involved in doing this, the most southwestern voucher, georeferenced on the south side of SR74, has a locality of "Meadows along Hwy 74 near Keen Camp", and is very unlikely to have been taken where it was georeferenced. Right: Map of the same area showing our GPS points where we have recorded species, as of 31 October 2019. Click on the pictures for larger versions. | ||
See photographs of the plants here at iNat:
- 30 observations of 25 taxa from 27 September 2019 by Tom Chester
- 125 observations of 102 taxa from 8 October 2019 by Don Rideout.
- 126 observations of 108 taxa from 14 October 2019 by Don Rideout.
- 99 observations of 89 taxa from 19 October 2019 by Don Rideout.
- 64 observations of 57 taxa from 27 October 2019 by Don Rideout.
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.
The column labeled #Pls gives a minimum estimate of the number of plants, up to a maximum of 99 plants, from the field surveys in 2019 and 2020.
Version for printing, without the 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)
Voucher data provided by the Consortium of California Herbaria (ucjeps.berkeley.edu/consortium/).
We thank Keir Morse, Jordan Zylstra, and Deb Nelson for help with the 4 May 2013 fieldwork; Lance Woolley for help with the two bloom lists compiled by Bruce Watts, and David Harris for help with the 8 October 2019 survey.
Jordan Zylstra kindly informed us about his find of Castilleja attenuata in this area, and Mark Reese let us know about his find of Erysimum capitatum here.