Thursday, July 15, 2010

Team Orange Hits Gold!

Driving up the winding mountain, we saw a plant with butterflies circling around it. The butterflies drew us in and we decided to take a closer look, and when Julie saw that it was flowering she quickly gave the word to collect it. So we bounded from the car, recorded our location, described it, photographed it, and collected the plant. Little did we know, we were collecting the plant Swertia parryi.

This morning, as Rusty was sorting through our new found data, he could identify the genus, but not the species of this plant. By looking through his old data, he was pleasantly surprised to discover that Swertia parryi had only been seen a couple times in this area since 1932. One record dates back to 1895. This plant, usually found in Southern California and Arizona, was an unexpected and exciting find.



Team Orange (Hayden, Stacy, Mari, and Jesse) now has bragging rights.
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4 comments:

  1. Long2WriteJuly 15, 2010 at 8:23 PM

    Congratulations Team Orange! Great find!!!

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  2. James M. BryantJuly 16, 2010 at 12:07 AM

    Was this plant found near Pipe Creek? I noticed in the Consortium of California Herbaria on line database that Philip Munz collected the species there in 1922, and other specimen records noted the plant from "Hemet Valley".

    Did you all get any rumbling or light show from the monsoonal storms? They were pretty violent in parts of Riverside County. Lightning seems to have started about a dozen fires in the chaparral and sage scrub of the lower slopes and foothills. Take care out there.

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownJuly 17, 2010 at 12:02 PM

    how r you guys doing? have not seen any posts since thursday.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Rusty RussellJuly 23, 2010 at 4:41 PM

    James, it was collected on the low slopes of Thomas Mountain, opposite Pipe Creek and on a northeast facing slope. I saw it in a proximal location three years ago.

    We got rain, but nothing serious. But it spiked the humidity to levels abnormal for this area. I guess I brought rain again, huh?

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